


the salt and the sea

by wayfarer



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, my boy sonny can hold a grudge with the best of them but rafael looks REAL good in a sweater
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-08
Updated: 2019-11-28
Packaged: 2021-01-16 07:09:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 23,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21267068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wayfarer/pseuds/wayfarer
Summary: Rafael returns. Sonny is less than pleased.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> do y'all ever think about how sonny and rafael were actually supposed to end up together but didn't because i sure do
> 
> warnings for all the usual svu fuckery

_"I'll be your friend in the daylight again_  
_There we will be, like an old enemy_  
_Like the salt and the sea"_

_-"Salt and the Sea" by The Lumineers_

He finds out by accident and that stings more than Sonny cares to admit. 

Like most days of late, he’s still in the office after most people have left. He’s already got his coat on and his bag over his shoulder, leafing through the paperwork for the third time to make sure everything is in order before he leaves for the night. Hadid wants it on her desk first thing tomorrow morning and she will not be pleased if it’s not perfect. He’s pretty sure he’s on thin ice with her as it is after his first case and while Olivia told him he always has a spot at SVU if he needs it, he doesn’t actually want to get fired before he’s even been here two months. 

It’s a good thing he checks again because he realizes Olivia missed a signature on one of the forms. He blames his sleep deprivation and the excessive nightmare that is bureaucratic paperwork for missing it the first two times around. He had thought SVU had a lot of paperwork. Christ. 

Sonny glances down at his watch. It’s almost eight-thirty, so Liv should be home and it’s only about a fifteen minute drive from One Hogan Place to her apartment. He’s slammed all day tomorrow with meetings, so he’d have to get up even earlier than he already does in the morning and swing by the precinct before coming back here. No doubt Amanda will be there and they haven't spoken since their blowout in front of everyone that weekend a couple of weeks ago about him leaving. Not to mention Kat, who he's not exactly fond of even though he’s self-aware enough to admit that has more to do with her replacing him (_which was your choice_, he reminds himself) than it does anything to do with her personally.

Yeah, no thanks. He’ll get the signature tonight and sleep in an extra thirty minutes tomorrow. 

He gets a taxi relatively quickly and calls Olivia on the way. She doesn’t pick up, but he figures she’s just busy getting Noah ready for bed. He shoots her a text. _hey, i need to get a signature from you tonight. i’m heading your way now  
_

He doesn’t get a reply, but he wasn’t really expecting one. He spends the ride to her apartment thinking idly about what he needs to get at the grocery store when he actually manages to make it there, Sunday dinner with his family coming up in a few days where he will no doubt get lectured about needing to get more sleep and what to get for dinner tonight. 

It’s a little after eight forty-five when they pull up in front of her building and he’s tentatively decided on the Chinese spot near his house. Tentatively only because he can hear his mother’s voice in his head, scolding him for how little he’s cooked lately, how living on takeout is not good for anyone, let alone someone his age. The argument plays out in his head as he makes his way into her building. He gets waved through as soon as he shows his ID since he’s one of her pre-approved visitors and the argument picks back up on the elevator, only stopping when he’s standing in front of her door and knocking.

It takes her only a handful of seconds to open the door, wearing pajamas and a surprised look on her face. “Sonny, hi,” she says. “Is everything alright?"

He holds up the folder of paperwork in his hand, giving her the bashful smile that used to get him out of trouble at Catholic school. Most the time, anyway. “Sorry about dropping in on you, but I’ve got something I need you to sign before tomorrow and I don’t have time to stop by the precinct in the morning. I hope I’m not disturbing you.” 

“No, no it’s...” she trails off, glancing back into her apartment for a second before turning back to him. She’s got a look on her face that he can’t quite decipher but makes him suspicious nonetheless. “Come on it.”

She widens the door and takes a step back, but her hesitation makes him hesitate. “Are you sure? I don’t have to come in if you’re busy. It’ll only take a second.”

“Really, it’s okay.” She gestures him in. “Come inside.” 

He opens the folder as he walks through the threshold. “You missed a signature on one of the forms from the Brewer case,” Sonny says, pulling out the one he needs. “Which does not surprise me at all considering how much–”

He halts mid-step, his muscles locking up on him as his brain tries to process what he’s seeing. 

Rafael Barba is sitting on Olivia’s sofa. 

Sonny blinks a few times in rapid succession just to make sure his brain hasn’t decided to punish him for the lack of sleep and excess of caffeine by making him hallucinate, but nope. Rafael really is there. 

He looks good, Sonny notices immediately. He’s going to hate himself for that later, but right now his brain is not functioning at peak performance and Rafael looks really good. He’s got a bit more gray in his hair than the last time they saw each other, but significantly less gel. It’s longer, curling around his ears in a way that makes Sonny’s stomach ache, and dark facial hair that isn’t quite a full beard but is pretty close to it. He’s wearing a soft looking green sweater pushed up to his elbows and he’s holding a glass of red wine, sitting on Olivia’s sofa like he didn’t disappear off the face of the planet for almost two years. 

Olivia shuts the door behind him and the sound is startlingly loud in the quiet of the room. 

“Carisi,” Rafael says, clearing his throat and looking extremely uncomfortable. He leans forward to sit his glass on the coffee table but doesn’t move to get up.

This is – a lot. Too much, actually. Way too much to deal with on a random night in the beginning of November, on the tail end of an exhausting day of an exhausting week of an exhausting month. He actually cannot handle this right now. 

A gentle hand touches his arm as Olivia comes to stand beside him and he jumps a little. It breaks the spell even if it is embarrassing and he shifts his gaze away from Rafael to Olivia, who manages to look both sympathetic and apologetic like she knows just how hard this is for him. Like she _ knows_.

“Uh, right,” Sonny says, voice shockingly steady considering the maelstrom of emotion that’s currently tearing his insides apart. He clears his throat anyway. “Right. So like I was saying, I just need the one signature.” 

She looks like she wants to say something, but instead she takes the form he’s clenching in his hand and Sonny is so fucking thankful he could cry. He pulls the pen from his jacket and gives it to her, careful not to let his eyes stray to the other side of the room as she places the now crinkled piece of paper against the closed closet door beside the bookcase and signs it.

“Would you like to stay for a drink?” She asks once she’s done, holding the pen and paper out to him. “Raf and I opened a bottle awhile ago.”

Raf.

“No, thank you,” he says, pocketing the pen and carefully sliding the form back into its appropriate place in the folder. “It’s been a long day.”

“Maybe next time.”

“Sure.” He gives her a strained smile and continues to avoid looking at Rafael. “You two have a nice night.” 

Rafael doesn’t say anything while Olivia tells him to be safe and to have a good night as she lets him out the door, but that’s hardly anything new. 

The rest of the week and the weekend go by in a blur. The universe apparently takes pity on him and the general population of Manhattan because no major cases roll in and force him to go to the precinct. Instead, he spends the next few days stuck in meeting after meeting and catching up on paperwork he’s been neglecting from the beginning of the week. When he’s not drowning it the monotony of paperwork, Hadid has him doing social calls. Apparently everyone who’s someone in the legal field of New York City is interested in meeting the Staten Island patrol officer turned SVU detective turned Manhattan ADA. He goes to bars that are so upscale they probably shouldn’t even be called bars and restaurants with menus that don’t have prices on them to meet with district attorneys, other ADAs and anyone else Hadid wants to form a relationship with. After a few days of this, it seems less about introducing him to people and more about Hadid having chosen him as her social liaison. He has no clue why until Friday night when he’s eating dinner at a relatively new restaurant in the Upper West Side with a Queens ADA. 

Halfway through their meal, she leans back in her chair and takes a sip of white white. “You’re just as charming as Hadid promised, Mr. Carisi,” she says with a smile.

He smiles back, making sure his dimples are on full display, and changes the subject. 

Sunday dinner with his family is both not as bad as he expected and somehow worse. Gina is dating a new guy, which is nothing new, but Mia also tentatively announces that she’s dating someone, which is both new and makes everyone a little nervous. Sonny reminds himself it wasn’t his fault and he shouldn’t feel guilty. Mia doesn’t blame him for what happened, so he shouldn’t blame himself either. Of course, the subject of dating then turns on him and he ignores the clicking sound his mother makes with her tongue when he tells her he isn’t seeing anyone and vehemently avoids thinking of Rafael. The conversation devolves into his father telling a story about something someone at church said and no one even asks him if he’s been attending Sunday mass lately (he hasn’t). They do, however, comment on the bags under his eyes. 

By the time Monday rolls around and he’s called into the precinct to talk to a perp before he lawyers up, his shock at Rafael’s sudden reappearance has turned into righteous anger, which is a hell of a lot easier to deal with. He thought he was mostly over Rafael and his disappearing act, but seeing him the other night brought back all those feelings he spent months squashing down. He still wants answers, an explanation, but he knows he shouldn’t hold his breath on that one. Since when has Rafael ever done anything Sonny wanted?

The perp has made a full confession by the time he actually makes it down there – God, he loves stupid criminals – so all he has to do is sign off on some paperwork instead of go into the interrogation room himself and play nice with the scumbag.

Kat looks smug as she informs him of how the interview went down. “Man, I wish all criminals were so spineless. Five minutes of bad cop and I had him squealing like a pig.”

“Nice work in there,” he tells her. Both because it’s true and because the animosity between them is going to make work harder than it needs to be for both of them if they keep it up. And really, Kat is doing a good job, even if she is a little “shoot first, ask questions later” sometimes. She’s doing a better job than he was when he started, anyway.

Her face kind of pinches, like she’s trying to decide whether to be pleased with the compliment or tell him to shut up. She finally settles on, “Thanks” and then excuses herself to do something other than talk to him. 

Olivia is in her office on the phone, so he stops by Fin’s desk and catches up for a few minutes before he makes his way over to Amanda, who has been ignoring him since he got here. He feels awful for their fight even though he doesn’t feel like he’s entirely to blame here, but he wants his friend back more than he wants to be right. Fighting is something they’ve gotten very good at since he joined SVU, but it’s a lot easier to hold onto a grudge when you aren’t forced to work with them every day. He’s worried if this keeps dragging out it might not stop at all. 

“Hi.”

She turns her attention to him, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear and giving him an awkward smile. “Hi yourself.”

“So. You want to talk about it?” he asks, sitting on the edge of her desk. He’s careful to avoid knocking over the stack of files or the framed picture of the girls. 

“Not really.” That tracks. Amanda likes talking about her feelings almost as little as Rafael – and he’s stopping that line of thought right now. 

“Me either, but we probably should.”

“I’m happy for you,” she says with a shrug. “Really, I am. I’m just not so happy for me, is all.”

“Yeah, I get that.” He nudges her foot, smiling. Forgive and forget is kind of their slogan at this point. “I miss you too, you know?”

She rolls her eyes, but looks pleased. “Yeah, yeah. You should come by this weekend. The girls miss you.”

“I’d like that.” In the madness of quitting SVU and starting his position in the DA’s office, it hasn’t left a lot of time for social gatherings. He used to go to Amanda’s at least twice a month to see the girls and cook enormous amounts of food. He knows how guilty she feels that she isn’t always around to cook them homemade meals, so he always makes sure they’ll have enough for leftovers for a couple of days. He hasn’t seen the girls since Billie’s baptism and it’s been at least a month since he’s cooked for them. It makes him feel like his aunt just to think it, but every time he sees Jesse and Billie he can’t get over how big they’re getting. He remembers holding both of them just hours after they were born and now Jesse tells him about how she’s going to become an astronaut because she wants to see Mars and Billie is beginning to take her first steps. “I’ll even cook.”

“Hey, no objections here.”

Before he can reply, Olivia pops her head out of her office. “Carisi, I need to speak with you for a moment before you leave.”

“You know you’re not my boss anymore, right?” Sonny jokes, but he stands up, smoothing his tie down, and makes his way to her anyway. “You can’t tell me what to do anymore.”

“Sure I can,” she says good-naturedly, opening the door for him. 

Instead of going behind her desk, she sits down on the couch, so he follows suit. She takes her glasses off, cleans them on her shirt and puts them back on, fixing him with a pointed look that tells him he’s walked into a trap. “How are you?” she asks in a soft voice, the one she uses to make people feel more comfortable. Yeah, definitely not a work conversation. 

“Fine,” he says, resisting the urge to bolt.

“You seemed very surprised to see Rafael last week.” She says it casually, but she’s watching closely for his reaction.

“Yeah, well.” He does not like being on this end of the interrogation. “The guy disappeared on us for almost two years and then shows up out of the blue? Of course I was surprised.”

Her perfect composure cracks for just a split second, but it’s enough for him to get it and wow. He feels a little like he’s been punched in the chest. “But it wasn’t out of the blue, was it?” Sonny asks, swallowing down the hurt and anger that threaten to make his voice shake. “You two have been in contact this whole time.” 

“Not the whole time,” she says, looking almost sheepish. “He reached out to me about three months after he left.”

“Of course he did.”

“Sonny–” She reaches out her hand for his.

“No, it makes sense,” he says, pulling his hand away. He knows he’s acting like an ass, but he’s just so angry. At Rafael for leaving, at Olivia for not saying anything earlier, at himself for still being so affected by all of this. “You two were always close.”

“So were you.”

“No.” He’s not quite capable of keeping the hurt out of his voice this time. “We really weren’t.” 

She studies him carefully, but he remains silent. When he first got here, that look would have been enough to have him confessing all his sins, but things have changed since then. He’s changed since then.

Finally, she sighs, knowing an unwinnable battle when she sees one. “We’re all meeting with Rafael tonight for drinks. You should come, if Hadid doesn’t already have you busy.”

She doesn’t, but he can’t think of anything he’d rather do less than pretend in front of a bunch of detectives that his heart isn’t being ripped out of his chest every time he looks at Rafael. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”

“Well, I think it’s a great idea, but like you said. I can’t tell you what to do anymore so I’m asking you as a friend to come. We miss having you around.”

“Would you have ever thought when you first met that mustached, oversized suit wearing detective you’d be saying that to him all these years later?”

“You’re changing the subject,” she says, but she’s smiling.

“Nothing gets by you, Cap.” He stands up. “I’ll think about it.”

“Marino’s. Seven o’clock. Hope we see you there.”

It’s closer to eight by the time he shows up. He almost doesn’t show up at all. He spent ten minutes just sitting in his office chair, staring at the wall, trying to weigh the pros and cons. The pros are that he gets to spend time with the squad. The cons are that he has to spend time with Rafael. It’s not exactly a long list, but it still takes him another ten minutes before he finally decides he’s going. 

He doesn’t have anything pressing he has to do tonight in preparation for tomorrow and he misses spending time with everyone. He knew transitioning from detective to ADA was going to be hard, but he didn’t take into account how lonely it was going to be. Despite his less than stellar first impression on the squad when he first started at SVU, they still accepted him relatively quickly. It’s hard not to when you work so closely with people day in and day out, sharing meals and long nights and trauma with each other. It’s not that he doesn’t like his colleagues at the DA’s office, but there isn’t the same sense of camaraderie as there was at SVU.

He wants to catch up with his friends and he’s not going to let Rafael stop him from doing so. And anyway, there will be enough people there to act as a buffer that he’ll hardly have to talk to Rafael if he doesn’t want to. 

Marino’s isn’t one of their usual places and it takes longer than he expected to get there. It’s a ways out both from the precinct and the DA’s office, which Sonny figures might not have been an accident. Rafael likely isn’t eager to run into old colleagues or cops who may or may not have been part of the whole death threat debacle. By the time Rafael left, he didn’t have many friends left in either place. 

It’s a nice bar, all dark wood and ambient lighting and soft piano music. It’s a decent size considering it’s Manhattan, but there are enough wooden tables dotting the floor that he has to strategically twist and turn to avoid bumping into anyone. A grand baby piano is tucked into the front corner and a young woman is sitting in front of it, eyes closed as she plays. The bar itself is tucked into the back left corner and he makes his way toward it as he scans the room.

It only takes him a second to spot them, all crammed together at a table against the wall toward the back of the room across from the bar. Amanda seems to see him at the same time he sees her and she gestures him over, spilling a little of her drink onto the table in the process. He can’t hear her over the noise of the crowd and the music, but he sees the way her teeth sink into her bottom lip as her mouth shapes the "f" sound and she starts mopping up the mess with napkins.

As he approaches, he takes stock. Fin and Amanda are on the side of the table facing the door, Fin sitting against the wall and Amanda beside him. There’s an empty chair beside Amanda despite the fact that he didn’t let anyone know whether he was coming or not, which warms his heart enough that he almost doesn’t mind that he spots the back of Rafael’s head next. He’s sitting across from Amanda, Kat on his left across from the empty seat and Olivia on his right across from Fin. 

He stops at the table long enough to say hello to everyone and drop off his bag. They’ve all been here for awhile if the number of empty glasses and bottles on the table are anything to go by. “Sorry about being late,” he says, careful not to let his eyes wander toward Rafael. “Had to finish something at work.”

Olivia waves his apology away, looking pleased. “We’re just glad you made it.”

“I’m gonna grab a drink,” he says, gesturing to the bar. 

A couple of minutes later, as he’s sliding into the seat beside Amanda with a beer in hand, he hears Kat say, “–can’t believe that was you.” She’s turned to Rafael, who’s sipping a scotch and looking pleased with himself. “I mean, that was the stuff of legend. Did you know about this?”

It takes Sonny a second to realize the question was directed toward him. “Sorry, what are we talking about?” he asks, hyperaware of the way Rafael has shifted his focus away from Kat to him. They make eye contact for a split second before Sonny looks away.

“We were just telling Kat about Barba’s little stunt with the belt during his first case with SVU,” Fin says. “She was a fan, apparently.”

“Ah.” Sonny takes a sip of his beer and loosens his tie before replying. “Yeah, I think everyone knows about it at this point.”

He was still in Staten Island back then, but he was following the case just like everyone else in the country with cable or an internet connection. Before Rafael let Adam Caine choke him in open court with his belt, Sonny didn’t think there was any possible way to get a conviction. Jocelyn Paley had lied about writing the book and most times in the eyes of the jury, once a liar always a liar. But then Rafael pulled that stunt and it won them the case. Sonny had already started applying to law schools at that point and he remembers thinking to himself, “That’s the kind of lawyer I want to be.” 

He’s never told anyone that before. 

“Gotta say,” Amanda says. “In hindsight, it kinda makes Stone seem like a bit of a stick in the mud.”

“Hey, now,” Sonny says automatically. He liked Peter, all things considered. “He wasn’t that bad.”

“I’m with Amanda on this one,” Fin says, shrugging. “He was a nice guy, but I wasn’t shedding any tears when he left.”

“Who’s Stone?” Kat asks. 

“The ADA before me.”

“And while he was very good at his job,” Olivia chimes in, “his departure did allow our Carisi here to dust off that law degree and put it to good use. I can’t say I don’t miss having you at the station, but I’m proud that you’re our new ADA. And that you shaved the mustache. To Carisi.”

Olivia raises her glass in a toast and the others follow. All except for Kat, who looks delighted by this new piece of information and asks, “Wait, wait. What’s this about a mustache?”

“Alright, alright,” he says, holding up a hand. “Enough with that. Especially about the mustache. We don’t need to revisit that.”

Rafael snorts and Sonny finds himself smiling before he can stop himself. 

It gets easier after that. They bounce between conversations about work and family and that new movie that just came out with relative ease. Kat tells them stories about some of the outrageous things she’s seen on the beat and Amanda talks about how Jesse is going to bankrupt her with all the extracurriculars she wants to do. Olivia gets Fin talking about his grandson for awhile and Sonny finally caves and tells Kat about the mustache. Much to his horror, Amanda has a picture and Kat inhales her beer when she sees it. 

“I _ hate _ you,” Sonny says, covering his face as he feels his cheeks flush, and Amanda laughs harder than he’s heard her laugh in a long time. 

Rafael mostly stays quiet, but he looks like he’s enjoying himself. They either already played catch up before Sonny arrived or they’re purposely avoiding asking him what he’s been up to the last couple of years. Either way, he doesn’t volunteer any new information, but he does tell a few stories about his time as an ADA, both in Manhattan and Brooklyn. Sonny’s heard most of them, either because he was there or through the grapevine, but some of the Brooklyn stories are new. 

By the time Sonny is finishing his second beer, he feels good. He’s ditched the jacket and tie over the last hour and rolled his sleeves up to his elbow, the crowd and the start of a buzz making him sweat. It feels like old times, being at a bar with the squad after a long day, and it makes it easier to let a little of his anger toward Rafael go, even if it's just for tonight. 

Rafael really does look good. He noticed it last week, but he was in such a state of shock that it was hard to drink it all in. It’s not just the hair and the beard, which is definitely worthy of its title at this point. It’s not the clothes either – another sweater, dark blue this time around, and dark jeans Sonny spotted when Rafael got up awhile ago for another drink – but the way he’s holding himself. He seems relaxed, comfortable in a way Sonny doesn’t think he’s ever seen him. 

It’s only after Rafael raises an eyebrow at him while Olivia and Fin are telling a story about a guy named Munch that Sonny realizes he’s been staring. He should really look away, but he doesn’t, and neither does Rafael. They hold each others gaze for a handful of seconds before Olivia says something to Rafael and he turns his attention to her. 

Sonny gets up abruptly and makes his way to the bathroom. He looks like a mess, the gel in his hair starting to fall and his face flushed. He splashes his face with water and then combs his damp fingers through his hair in an attempt to fix it, but it doesn’t do much good. He stares at himself in the mirror for a few seconds, hands gripping either side of the sink, and thinks to himself, _ what in the hell are you doing? _

He heads straight to the bar when he leaves the bathroom instead of rejoining the table. He really shouldn’t get another drink considering he’s got work tomorrow, but he needs it. He’s losing his buzz and that content nostalgic feeling right along with it, making it harder to forget that he’s still upset with Rafael for disappearing and reappearing with no explanation. Not for him, at least. 

The bar is a good bit more crowded now, so he takes a seat at one of the empty stools at the corner. As he waits for his drink, he feels someone slide up beside him, arm brushing up against his own. He knows it’s Rafael without even looking, keeping his eyes focused on the bartender as she mixes someone’s drink. Usually, he would be filling the silence with inane chatter. Nothing of any import, just talking for the sake of filling the quiet, but now he stays silent. 

“Are you going to ignore me all night?” Rafael asks.

“Turnabout is fair play.”

Another brief silence as Rafael slides into the empty stool next to his. “I have to say, I really wasn’t expecting you to leave SVU so soon, if at all. I could hardly believe it when Liv told me you were my replacement.” 

Sonny can tell just by the tone of his voice that he’s teasing, but that righteous anger he’s been nurturing the last several days comes back in full force and his jaw clenches involuntarily. “Stone replaced you, remember? I replaced him.” 

“Semantics.”

Instead of replying, he focuses on the bartender. She’s moved on from the last drink, now making something with gin and lemon and lime. Cocktails haven’t been his thing since Theresa snuck him multiple raspberry daiquiris at their cousin’s wedding when he was seventeen and he got sicker than he ever has been in his entire life, so he’s not sure what she’s making. Maybe that one Gina likes, a negroni? He’s pretty sure that has gin in it. 

“You’re angry.”

“What makes you say that?” 

She pulls out heavy cream and an egg from the mini fridge under the bar and any semblance of an idea about what she’s making goes out the window. 

“Sonny.”

“Don’t,” Sonny snaps, finally turning to look at him. “Don’t fucking – just don’t.” 

“Don’t what?” Rafael asks, raising an eyebrow. Under that mask of wide eyed innocence, he looks vaguely satisfied. Sonny recognizes that look well. He’s seen Rafael make it dozens of times in court after getting under a defendant’s skin, making them crack and finally say what he wants them to say. It used to impress Sonny, how good Rafael is at knowing just where to push to make someone break, but now it just makes him angrier. 

“Don’t come back here after two years and try to pick up where you left off with the – the banter and the smug looks like nothing happened. A lot has changed since you left.” For good measure, he adds, “I’ve changed” but it feels less true than he wants it to be. 

“I know.” For just a second, so briefly Sonny can’t be sure he’s not just imagining it, Rafael looks sad. And tired. So, so tired. Before he can think about forming a response, in a much lighter tone, Rafael adds, “Liv says you’re doing well at the DA’s office.”

Sonny snorts. “I’m drowning.” 

Much to his relief, the bartender comes over then, interrupting their conversation. Sonny orders a beer even though he doesn’t really want it and he stands up after she hands it to him. He takes a step back toward their table before a hand reaches out and grasps his forearm. 

“It gets better,” Rafael offers, dropping his hand when Sonny gives it a pointed look.

“Does it?” He thinks about the lines Peter crossed at the end, how he knew he had to quit or things would spiral even more out of control. Like it did with Rafael. Like it did with Alex Cabot. He doesn’t think the same thing will happen to him one day, but they probably never did either. “Because I’m pretty sure this position is cursed.”

Rafael laughs, sharp and surprised. “I think you’re right.”

Sonny downs about half of the beer on his way back to the table, the carbonation making his eyes water and his stomach protest. Everyone else is still sitting, talking and laughing, but Sonny’s good mood is long gone. Instead of sitting back down, he places the half empty bottle on the table and starts to gather his things.

“Ditching us already, Carisi?” Fin asks. 

“Yeah,” Sonny says, slipping on his jacket. “I’ve got a meeting in the morning I forgot about.”

Fin accepts his explanation with a shrug, as unfazed and disinterested as always, and Kat doesn’t seem like she cares either way, but Olivia and Amanda look a little less convinced. Amanda in particular glances behind him at the bar, where Sonny assumes Rafael is still sitting, and turns back to him with a suspicious look on her face. 

“You know what,” she says, pushing back her chair, “I think I’ll head out too. Share a cab with me?”

He opens his mouth to say no, both because he doesn’t want to talk about whatever she clearly wants to talk about and because they don’t really live close enough to warrant sharing a taxi, but the look she gives him makes him think twice. “Yeah, sure.”

Kat says something about subtly that both he and Amanda ignore as they say their goodbyes to Olivia and Fin. Amanda turns afterwards, scanning the bar. “Where’d Barba disappear to?”

“Think I saw him head toward the bathroom a minute ago,” Fin says. 

“Well, tell him we said it was nice to see him. And congratulations.” 

“Of course,” Olivia says. “Get home safe.”

Amanda is mostly quiet as they wait for a taxi, rubbing her hands together and mumbling under her breath about the cold. Even after years of being here, she still isn’t quite used to northern winters, no matter how thick the gloves she buys are or how many layers she wears. He hadn’t bothered to bring a coat to work today, so he’s starting to shiver too by the time they get into the taxi.

After they rattle off both their addresses, she turns to him with an expectant look.

“What?” he asks, trying not to sound defensive and mostly succeeding.

“What was that?”

“What do you mean?”

She raises an eyebrow, her expression turning incredulous. “Seriously, Carisi? You think I didn’t notice how you barely looked at Barba all night?”

“I talked to him at the bar,” he says weakly. If Amanda noticed, he’s sure Olivia and Fin did too. Sonny was never exactly subtle about his need for both Rafael’s approval and attention over the years, so his avoidance tonight must have been extremely obvious to them. 

“Yeah and you couldn’t get away fast enough afterwards.” The car it front of them hits their brakes, briefly lighting her face up red, and they slowly come to a halt as traffic jams up. “Listen, Sonny. I don’t agree with what Barba did either, but he was acquitted, remember? It’s not our job to punish him.”

“Wait wait wait,” Sonny says, holding a hand up. “That’s what you think I’m mad about it?”

Her eyebrows furrow. “Isn’t it?”

Sonny huffs out a laugh even though he doesn’t find anything about this remotely funny. “I’m not mad at him for pulling the plug on that kid,” he says honestly. He didn’t agree then and he doesn’t agree now with what Rafael did, but that’s because he broke the law. That poor kid was already dead and the only reason Rafael pulled the plug was because the mother couldn’t. As tragic as the entire situation was, Sonny never blamed him for his decision, even though he thinks Rafael made the wrong one. “I’m mad because afterwards he disappeared without a word to any of us.”

Amanda blinks a few times, clearly surprised by his answer. “Seriously?”

“Yeah, seriously.” He mostly thought they were done thinking he was some morally righteous asshole just because he was Catholic, but maybe not. “I mean, I thought we were all friends, you know? And then he goes off and does this insane thing that almost lands him in prison and then he just leaves without saying a word to anybody?”

The way her face softens with sympathy instantly makes him regret speaking. “You two were close.” 

“No, we weren’t.” The car lurches forward suddenly and he catches himself on the front seat. “Why does everyone keep saying that?”

“Uhuh,” she says, in that soft tone of voice he only ever hears her break out with victims and her kids. He must look really pitiful because she places a hand over his own. “Listen. Far be it from me to lecture anyone about their personal life, but I know you cared about Barba. I can understand why you’re angry at him for leaving the way he did, but he’s back now and he might not know that’s why you’re angry with him.”

“I don’t think Barba is losing any sleep over me being mad at him, regardless of the reason.”

“I think you underestimate how much he cares about your opinion.”

He doesn’t dignify that with a response and they fall silent. She pulls out her phone and he watches the city pass by through the window until he remembers something. “Hey, what were you congratulating him about?”

“Huh?”

“When we were leaving, you told them to tell Barba congratulations. What for?”

She looks up from her phone, confused. “His book?”

“What book?”

“The one he wrote.”

“Barba wrote a book?” he asks incredulously. “Rafael Barba wrote a book?”

She shrugs, shoving her phone back into her purse. “Rafael Diaz did, anyway. Liv said he doesn’t exactly want to advertise it, so he wrote under a pseudonym. The title has something to do with winter, I think. I bought a copy, but I haven’t started it yet.”

“What is it even _ about_?”

Amanda leans forward a little and he follows suit like they’re sharing a secret. “A crime thriller,” she says, fighting against the smile threatening to break out on her face. “Liv said the main character is a New York detective. I thought she was pulling my leg when she first told me.”

Sonny leans back in his seat, stunned. “I cannot believe he wrote a book.”

She shrugs again. “He did tend to get pretty creative in the courtroom. Some of his summations sounded like they came straight out of a TV drama. Not to mention he probably had a lot of free time since he can’t practice anymore.”

The jovial feeling disappears as he’s reminded of that little fact. It’s not like it came as a great surprise that he lost his license, but to think about Rafael clawing his way out of the Bronx and into Harvard only to lose everything makes him impossibly sad. Regardless of how it ended, Rafael was an incredible ADA and the legal field is a worse place without him. Not for the first time, Sonny wishes he could go back in time and somehow prevent all of this from ever happening.

They reach Amanda’s place a few minutes later and he promises to call her in a couple of days to figure out which day is best for him to come over for dinner. There’s a good chance they’ll see each other before then anyway, but he can dream. He spends the remainder of the ride to his place focusing on what he wants to cook over the weekend. Amanda is partial to his antipasto pasta salad, but the last time he cooked it Jesse refused to eat about half the ingredients. He knows they both like his Bolognese sauce, but he made that last time. After a few minutes of deliberation, he decides on lasagna. It’s simple, but he knows Amanda and Jesse like it and its soft enough that Billie should be able to eat it too. He’ll pick up some fresh ciabatta from that bakery in Little Italy he likes to go with it. Maybe some cannoli too. Amanda doesn’t like the girls to have sweets, but he thinks he can convince her to break the rule for once. 

About two blocks from home, his stomach growls and he realizes he never ate dinner, too busy rushing to get to Marino’s to think about stopping for food. He tries to remember what’s currently in his fridge, but comes up blank. He’s pretty sure there’s an egg, but he can’t be sure. Takeout it is then.

Once the taxi drops him off, he orders a pizza for delivery. He should have plenty of time to get inside and shower before the pizza arrives, but he rushes up to the fourth floor just in case. His mind can’t help but replay the night as he showers, thinking back to the brush of Rafael’s arm against his at the bar and the feel of his hand around his forearm. Rafael has never been a tactile person, at least not with him. The only time Sonny can remember Rafael purposely touching him was after Dodds died, a brief pat on the shoulder for comfort. Maybe he’s mellowed out the last couple of years, away from the stress of the job. Maybe he moved to some secluded cabin in the woods upstate to write his book, growing his own vegetables and getting in touch with himself. 

Sonny snorts at the mental image. Rafael would probably rather pull out his own teeth than live in the woods and Sonny’s not sure he’s ever even seen him eat a vegetable. The thought of Rafael Barba, who spends his weekends on yachts and spends more money on suits than Sonny does in rent, tending to a garden is enough to make him laugh so hard he accidentally inhales water.

After a coughing fit that leaves his chest heaving and his eyes watering, he pushes all thoughts of Rafael from his mind and grabs the shampoo.

The pizza arrives ten minutes after he gets out of the shower and he spends the rest of the night lounging in front of the TV, working his way through the DVR list he’s been neglecting and trying not to think about anything. It mostly works and by the time he’s crawling into bed a little after eleven, he feels almost back to normal. 

He spends the next thirty minutes tossing and turning before he cracks and pulls up the Amazon app on him phone. He types in Rafael Diaz and sure enough, there it is. The book is called _Risk of Winter_ and its number eleven on Amazon’s Top 20 Chart. It’s been on the chart for the last two months, almost since it was released. Sonny would be impressed if he wasn’t shocked that not only had Rafael written a book, he had apparently written a _paranormal_ _crime thriller._ According to the summary, it's about a Manhatten detective who retires to a small town in Virginia after a case goes bad and the house he moves into ends up being haunted by one the past owner. The owner had died in the house after a fire accidentally started in the living room, but the detective begins to have suspicions about whether it was actually an accident as he digs deeper into what happened. Sonny scrolls down to the reviews, which are mostly four and five stars. The phrases “on the edge of my seat” and “read it all in one go” and “mind blowing” pop up several times, but there are also a few reviews calling it “overly depressing” with an “unsatisfying ending.”

He scrolls back up and hovers his thumb over the Add to Cart button, chewing on his lip. On the one hand, he wants to read it so bad he could actually die. On the other, that should be reason enough for him not to. Rafael chose to walk out of his life two years ago. He moved and changed his number and ceased to exist as far as Sonny could tell. If he had wanted Sonny in his life, he would have said something. As much as it pains him to admit, the relationship they had was more significant in Sonny’s head than it ever was in reality. For all the late nights and banter and teasing, he and Rafael rarely spent time with each other outside of a workplace setting. Even when they did, they were never without Olivia or Amanda or Fin. It wouldn’t be the first time in Sonny’s life he thought someone cared about him more than they actually did, but he sure as hell hopes its the last. 

He needs to let it go. Rafael made his choice and now it's time for him to make his. 

He locks his phone, places it on the nightstand and goes to sleep. 

He caves the next day and walks to the Barnes and Noble a couple of blocks away from the DA’s office on his lunch break. The book is on one of the tables at the front of the store and he grabs a copy and gets in line before he can convince himself not to. His resolve is truly pathetic, but he literally cannot _ not _ read it. 

“Good choice,” the cashier says as she rings him up. “Definitely one of the better crime thrillers, in my opinion. Apparently the author used to work in the law field, so it’s pretty accurate. Do you want a receipt?”

“No, thank you,” Sonny says. 

He reads the back cover as he walks to the office, bumping into a few people and getting dirty looks in the process. The summary is the same as it was on Amazon, but he’s more interested in the author’s description section. There’s no picture of Rafael and it’s as vague as he expected it to be. 

_ Rafael Diaz was born in New York, New York and is a graduate of Harvard University. His decades of work in the legal system both inspires and brings authenticity to his work. _

He desperately wants to go home and start reading, but that’s hardly an option. He shoves the book into its bag and stops by a hot dog cart on the way back. When he gets to his office twenty minutes later, he puts the book into his desk drawer and tells himself he’s not going to think about it until he’s home. 

Roughly seven hours later, he’s sitting on his couch and staring at the front cover. He’s already eaten dinner and showered, and there’s no pressing work he has to do, but he hesitates opening the cover. It feels like an invasion of Rafael’s privacy even though thousands of people have already read it if the reviews are anything to go by. Still, it’s one thing for strangers who don’t know you to read your book, but it’s entirely another for a former colleague to do so. Rafael had written under a pseudonym for a reason, after all. 

Not for the first time, he wishes he had asked Amanda more questions. She told him Liv had told her, but did the whole squad know? He can’t see Olivia telling Amanda if Rafael wasn’t okay with it, but that doesn’t mean everyone else knows. It wasn’t brought up last night at the bar, but maybe they just didn’t want to embarrass him. Or maybe they talked about it before Sonny arrived. 

He stares at it for another minute before his already weak resolve cracks and he opens it. He flips through the first couple of pages, but stops on the dedication page. It reads, _ For Liv, for everything. _ He wonders if she knew about the book from the beginning or if she was as surprised as he was when she found out.

He taps his fingers on the page in a rhythmic pattern, a nervous tic that drives everyone around him insane, before deciding _ screw it _ and flipping to the first chapter. 

It opens with a hostage situation. It was originally a DV call, but quickly escalated into a husband taking his wife and their daughter hostage in their home. Sonny knows ten pages in it’s going to end very badly, but that doesn’t stop him from wincing along as he reads. The main character, Detective – Sonny laughs, he can’t help it – James Smith is being too hasty and sure enough, it rapidly spirals out of control just a few pages later. It ends with the husband killing his wife, his daughter and himself before ESU can make it inside.

Jesus. Sonny snaps the book shut, rubbing a hand over his face. He knows all too well how easily something like that can happen. One wrong move and he had a gun against his forehead, only surviving because Olivia pulled the trigger a second before Cole did. Even years later he can remember the way the blood felt as it sprayed over his face, hot and wet. It took weeks before he stopped smelling blood and even longer than that before Cole’s face stopped making an appearance in his dreams every night. 

He opens it back up and continues to read.

Two things become abundantly clear as Sonny reads through the first couple of chapters. The first is that Olivia had to have helped Rafael with the procedural part of the police work because it’s too accurate to have been Googled and he can’t imagine Rafael asking anyone else. The second is that Rafael poured a lot of his own feelings into the character. Smith’s pain at the loss of the mother and her child is raw and all-consuming, a poignant kind of pain you have to experience to be able to describe. After years on the job, Sonny knows that kind of pain all too well and it makes his chest ache that apparently Rafael does too. It’s a pain that eats you alive from the inside out if you let it, which Smith does. In the span of six months he goes from one of the top detectives in the city to a borderline alcoholic who retires to Virginia not as a means of escape, but as self-imposed punishment for what happened. 

Hours tick by and Sonny continues to read. The paranormal stuff starts up after Smith moves into an old log cabin on the outskirts of town that had only recently gone on the market after nearly burning to the ground five years beforehand. It’s nothing major at first, flickering lights and cabinet doors being open in the morning despite being closed the night before, things that can be explained away by old wiring and too much to drink. A couple of weeks after moving in, he starts having a recurring nightmare of waking up, only to find a man lying in bed beside him. It’s the same man every time, and he reaches out to Smith and tries to speak, but Smith always wakes up before he says anything. It only escalates from there. Things like feeling someone's breath on the back of his neck and objects falling off of flat surfaces until he slowly becomes convinced that he’s losing his mind. 

The book is a little over four hundred pages and Sonny makes it to about one hundred and fifty before his eyes start to revolt and he has to call it a night. He leaves the book on the coffee table in his living room so he won’t be tempted and sinks into bed with a sigh.

He’s exhausted, but his mind is racing too fast for him to fall asleep. The thing is, the book is shockingly good. He shouldn’t be surprised because apparently Rafael excels at everything he does, but it’s hard to reconcile the image of the Rafael he has in his mind with the Rafael who wrote this book. There are certain parts that sound so much like Rafael Sonny can almost hear him saying it in his head, but other parts leave Sonny reeling that Rafael was the one to create this world. The characters are compelling, the prose is descriptive without being overwhelming, the paranormal aspects are downright eerie and the emotion is raw and honest. About fifty pages in, Sonny had gotten a pen and started to highlight certain passages, writing little notes in the margins like the book is Rafael speaking to him and Sonny is replying. 

It takes a long, long time for Sonny to fall asleep.

The rest of the week goes by much the same way. He focuses on work during the day and he reads at night. Sonny finds himself completely engrossed as Smith starts digging into the history of the house, growing more and more convinced that he’s not actually going crazy. After talking to the locals, he finds out that the house had nearly burned to the ground five years ago, only recently being fully repaired and put on the market. The owner at the time of the fire, a beloved school teacher named Jack Farraway, wasn’t so lucky. It takes page after page of rationalization, but Smith finally admits that his house is haunted when someone shows him a picture of Jack and he recognizes him as the man from his dreams. 

Sonny’s never been a big fan of horror – he’s got enough of it in his actual life, thanks – so he finds himself getting a little spooked. One scene in particular gets to him. It’s the cliche horror trope of wiping a steamed mirror and seeing someone behind you, but it’s a childhood fear that carried into adulthood. Rafael does a good job of balancing the horror with humor though, and there’s a scene involving Smith and a medium burning sage in the house to “rid it of ghostly energy” that has Sonny dying laughing. He can imagine the look on Rafael’s face, watching an eighty year old woman walk around his house burning a spice and commanding the spirits to leave. 

“Why sage?” Sonny can almost hear Rafael ask. “Why not basil or mint or a common tree leaf from outside?”

Sonny’s not sure when he started picturing Rafael as James Smith considering they share no physical similarities according to Rafael’s description, but Smith’s stubbornness and dry wit reminds Sonny so much of him that it’s hard to stop associating Rafael’s features with his character’s. 

A new character is introduced after Smith starts asking around town about the fire and Sonny likes her immediately. Her name is Katherine and she’s the daughter of Jack Farraway. Despite having moved to Pennsylvania, she hung onto the house for years before finally deciding to put it on the market, unwilling to let go of the last piece of her father she had left. She returns home after some of the locals called to let her know the guy who bought the property was asking around town about her father and the fire. She’s got a thick accent and a take no shit attitude that immediately reminds Sonny of Amanda. Her and Smith butt heads immediately, but in a way that tells Sonny they’re probably going to end up together. 

He stays up just as late Wednesday night reading as he did Tuesday, but Thursday night he has to work late and he crashes as soon as he gets home. He wakes up to a text from Amanda Friday morning, asking him to come over Saturday at six. She attached a video of Jesse shyly asking Uncle Sonny if he would bring those cream things she likes like last time and Sonny immediately saves it to his phone, sending back a _ yes!!! _

_ You’re spoiling my children rotten _

_ what are uncles for? _ Sonny replies, smiling. 

The pleasant mood doesn't last long. Olivia calls him around noon to come down to the station to discuss a plea deal with a perp accused of sexually assaulting his nephew. According to Olivia, the boy is terrified that people at school will find out what happened, so he refuses to testify. His parents back his play and Sonny’s not going to subpoena an already traumatized fourteen year old, so he spends an hour going back and forth with the smarmy defense attorney until they reach a deal. It’s not long enough – it never is – but he’s going to do hard time and he’ll be on the registry for the rest of his life, so Sonny tries to count it as a win. 

Afterwards, Sonny sits on the edge of Amanda’s desk, sipping a cup of terrible coffee he kind of misses and wondering why he does this job. “I just don’t understand how a person can do something so horrible to someone they’re supposed to love and protect.”

“If you did, we would be having a very different conversation.” She looks grim and exhausted, like she does after every case involving a child. 

Sonny goes back to the office and tries to push the case from his mind, but it's hard to. Any case involving a kid hits him hard, but the ones where the assailant is a family member even more so because so many times they get away with it. The kid is too afraid to tell their parents or their parents don’t believe them because _ no, my brother/sister/husband/wife would never do something like that. _He’s glad this one turned out differently, that the kid immediately told his parents and his parents believed him, but he knows that family is probably never going to recover from what happened. It sends him spiraling, wondering about how many kids are out there that weren’t believed. 

He keeps himself busy, but his bad mood persists throughout the rest of the day and into the evening. After dinner, he FaceTimes with his niece for awhile. She talks a mile a minute like all the Carisis do, about school and a boy named Alex in her class and the new Frozen movie, all the while Bella gives him concerned looks in the background. She looks like she wants to grill him, but she doesn’t while her daughter is still in the room. Tommy is cooking dinner, so Sonny briefly says hello to him before hanging up. 

Afterwards, he picks up Rafael’s book. 

Last he left off, Smith and Katherine were growing closer as they continued to look into the fire. It happened a few days after Christmas and was deemed an accident once the source was determined to be the tree lights. A too dry Christmas tree and a spark is a deadly combination. According to the ME, Jack Farraway likely never knew what happened, dying of smoke inhalation while asleep in his bed. Katherine swore up and down to anyone who would listen at the time that the fire wasn’t an accident, claiming that the lights were brand new and her father would never leave them on overnight, but in the end the case was closed.

Smith is inclined to believe her, but he neglects to tell her that her father’s spirit has been trying to communicate with him since he moved in. She’s a smart woman though, and as their investigation into the fire continues, she grows more and more convinced he’s hiding something from her. Though their chemistry is nearly tangible, the secret creates a wedge between them. It all comes to a head when they discover a pattern of suspicious fires over the last ten years and he finally comes clean about why he was so interested to begin with. The reaction is explosive to say the least. 

In a nice turn of events, it’s Smith who’s taken hostage by the arsonist and Katherine who saves him. It turns out that one of the local firefighters had been starting fires for years so he could put them out. He’d mostly set them in vacant buildings so no one would get hurt, but he had decided that year to up the stakes. He’d broken into Jack Farraway’s home and tampered with the Christmas tree lights while Jack was out, figuring that saving such a prominent member of the community would make everyone view him as a hero. He hadn’t meant for Jack to die. 

When Smith returns home, Jack’s spirit has seemingly slid from existence now that the truth of his death has emerged. The arsonist goes to prison and Katherine forgives him for withholding the truth from him, but their relationship seems to be irreversibly damaged. Smith decides to remain in town, but Katherine returns to Pennsylvania. 

The ending scene is of Smith sitting on the front porch, sipping a beer and watching the sunset, wondering how many times Jack had done the same thing before he died. 

Sonny shuts the book and tosses it on his coffee table, sliding down the couch until he’s staring up at the ceiling. He’d read to distract himself, but he finds that he feels worse now than he did before. The book has had a melancholic tone to it since the very beginning, but it hits him harder after the day he’s had and he agrees with the review criticizing it for having an unsatisfying ending. They caught their bad guy and Katherine finally got closure, but Smith ended the book the same way he began it: as a depressed alcoholic who blames himself for what happened in New York. Alone and guilty. It’s arguably the biggest theme in the book, guilt. Smith’s guilt that he couldn’t save that family, Katherine’s guilt that she couldn’t save her father, guilt that no one noticed what was going on before it turned deadly. Guilt guilt guilt and more guilt. 

If this was somehow Rafael’s attempt at therapy, Sonny sincerely hopes he writes a sequel.

His bad mood persists throughout the night and most of the day Saturday. He’d slept in, which was a nice change for once, but going from so little sleep for days to so much sleep in one night means he wakes up with a pounding headache. He takes some ibuprofen and lounges around the house, watching TV and dozing, before it’s time to start prepping for dinner. 

It takes him a little over an hour to go to Little Italy for the ciabatta and cannoli and to stop at the grocery store for the lasagna ingredients, but he makes it back to his apartment in plenty of time to get the sauce put together and on the stove. He usually likes to make the noodles from scratch, but he doesn’t have the energy to today. He’d gotten the good noodles from the store though, so hopefully Amanda doesn’t notice the difference. 

After cleaning up the dishes, he does a much needed load of laundry and tidies up the apartment while the sauce simmers. He’s away more than he’s home lately and a fine layer of dust has started gathering on all the flat surfaces. His mother would be appalled if she saw the place, not that she’s been around lately. She hates the commute from Staten Island, much preferring to let Sonny come to her. It’s an arrangement that works well for both of them, especially as of late.

He boils the noodles as the sauce finishes up and spends the next fifteen minutes painstakingly layering the lasagna. At least, until he catches sight of what time it is and starts hurrying along, burning the tips of his fingers in the process. He curses, but powers through and covers it with aluminum foil once he’s done. It probably would have been easier to just cook everything at Amanda’s, but her kitchen is a mess and Sonny doesn’t want to have another argument with her about the proper way to organize a kitchen, so it’s a juggling act as he leaves his apartment with everything.

He texts Amanda once he’s in the taxi, telling her he’s on the way and asking her to preheat the oven. 

She doesn’t, but that’s okay because Jesse greets him with a big smile and an excited squeal when Amanda opens the door, Billie on her hip, and Sonny’s bad mood melts away like it was never there. Once Sonny sets everything down on the counter, he scoops up Jesse and tosses her up in the air, something that was much easier when she was still Billie’s size.

“Easy, easy,” Amanda says as she shifts Billie to her other hip and turns the oven on. “I don’t want to make an ER trip tonight.”

“Mom,” Jesse says, drawing out the word. “Uncle Sonny won’t drop me.”

“Yeah, mom,” Sonny says, tossing her up again. “Uncle Sonny won’t drop her.”

Jesse loses interest after a few minutes, so Sonny puts her down and she takes off to her room, telling him she has something to show him. In the meantime, he takes Billie from Amanda while she slides the lasagna into the oven, making funny faces at her while she pats her sticky fingers against his cheeks.

“You seem like you’re in a better mood,” Amanda comments after glancing around the corner to make sure Jesse is still in her room.

Sonny winces as Billie lands an impressively hard hit for someone still in diapers. “Jeez, kid. What’d I ever do to you?” He grabs a stuffed bear from the counter and hands it to her. She immediately smacks him in the face with it, but at least it’s a softer blow. 

When he turns his attention to Amanda, she’s leaning against the counter watching him.

Sonny sighs. “It’s just been a long week.”

“I hear you.” She gives him a grim smile and touches Billie’s foot. “Yesterday was a rough case.”

“Aren’t they all?”

Jesse comes back out into the kitchen then, holding a picture of the squad she drew at preschool the day before. “We were supposed to draw a picture of all our family,” she explains. She points to the tallest stick figure. “That’s you! I used a black and a white crayon for your hair.”

He laughs. “That is very impressive, Jess.”

Dinner is ready around six-thirty and no one seems to have any complaints about the store bought noodles. Sonny multitasks, feeding both himself and Billie so Amanda can have a meal in peace for once. Jesse keeps up a steady stream of chatter about preschool and friends and anything else that crosses her mind, so the topic of work doesn’t come up again for awhile.

Amanda reluctantly allows Jesse to have part of a cannolo once she finishes her lasagna and lets her play on the iPad for half an hour before bed. Apparently screen time trumps Uncle Sonny time, so Jesse disappears into her room shortly after dinner is over. After loading the dishwasher and putting away the leftovers, they retire to the living room with a glass of wine. Amanda curls up under a blanket on the couch, but Sonny sits on the floor with Billie while she plays with blocks. 

“I seriously needed this,” Sonny says, settling into a comfortable position. He hands Billie a block and she chews on it for a second before smacking his outstretched leg a couple of times with it. 

Amanda raises an eyebrow. “What? To cook dinner for us and be beat up by my baby?”

“To have some normalcy back in my life.”

She slowly sips her wine as she studies him for a few seconds. “You read Barba’s book yet?”

Billie starts reaching for the glass in his hand, so he sets it on the coffee table and starts building a block tower to distract her. He only makes it three pieces high before she tears it down, shrieking with laughter. “Yeah, I finished it last night.” He manages to not sound as sheepish as he feels. 

“I finished it this morning during Billie’s nap. It was good, but creepy as all hell, don’t you think?”

“Yeah.” Sonny laughs. “The mirror scene got me. “What’d you think about Katherine?”

“She seemed a bit familiar.”

“That’s what I thought.” He manages to make a five block high tower before Billie gets to it this time. “You think Barba had a secret crush on you?”

Amanda chokes out laughter and Sonny glances back at her, eyebrow raised. “What?”

“Sonny,” she says incredulously. “She’s a leggy, rough around the edges, heart of gold type with pretty blue eyes and a thick accent. Sound familiar?”

He rolls his eyes, turning his attention back to the blocks. “The exact same thing could be said about you.”

“Yeah, but Barba liked you way better than he ever liked me.”

Sonny doesn’t respond, focusing on Billie instead. She’s still playing, but she’s starting to flag a little, and he suspects it's nearing her bedtime. 

“It was kinda sad,” he says after a while. 

“I didn’t like the ending much.” She finishes off the last of her wine and puts the empty glass on the coffee table next to his mostly full one. 

“You think he wrote it to cope with everything?”

She shrugs. “You’d have to ask him."

They move onto lighter topics for awhile until Billie starts fussing and Amanda stands up, declaring it’s time for bed. Sonny stands too, scooping Billie up so Amanda can get Jesse ready to go to sleep. He walks her around the room, patting her on the back and talking to her, as she cries and rubs her little fists into her eyes.

Amanda and Jesse both come out after a few minutes, Amanda to take Billie from him and Jesse to give him a hug goodnight. He tells her he’ll visit again soon and leans down to whisper into her ear, “I’ll leave the rest of the cannoli here for you, but you gotta be good for your mom, okay?”

“Okay!”

Amanda gives him a suspicious look as Jesse runs back into her room with a noticeable spring in her step. “I don’t know what you just told my daughter, but I don’t think I like it.”

Sonny gives her his best “who, me?” look and glances down at his watch. “I should probably be heading out."

“You sure?” She looks down at Billie, who has laid her head down on Amanda’s chest. “It won’t take long to get her down.”

“Yeah, I’m sure. I need to catch up on some sleep.”

Amanda follows him to the door, swaying Billie back and forth while he grabs his coat off the rack. He gives her a half hug and rubs a gentle hand over Billie’s head. She doesn’t have as much hair as Jesse did at that age, but it's just as soft. “Thanks for having me over. I promise it won’t be so long next time.” 

“Thanks for cooking.” She opens the door and he slips his coat on as he walks through the threshold. “Hey, Sonny?”

He turns, adjusting his collar. “Yeah?”

She hesitates, resting her head on top of Billie’s, and gives him a half smile. “That book was filled with a lot of regret and I don’t think it all stemmed from pulling the plug on that baby.”

“Goodnight, Amanda.”

Amanda’s words echo in his head on the ride home. Not just about regret, but also what she’d said about Katherine. It hadn’t exactly escaped his notice they shared a few characteristics, but he’s read enough interviews of authors to understand they often take bits and pieces of people they know and put them into their characters. It doesn’t mean anything.

But there’s a quiet voice in the back of his head asking him what if it does.

The thing is, he’d thought for a long time he and Rafael were working toward something. Sonny knows that he hadn’t made the best first impression and for a long time Rafael wasn’t his biggest fan, but that started changing the longer Sonny stayed at SVU. Rafael never stopped giving Sonny shit, but over time his cutting remarks lost their edge until it was more playful teasing than anything else. He stopped rolling his eyes every time Sonny brought up law school and started actually listening to what he was saying, offering corrections when Sonny was wrong rather than just dismissing him. On the occasions he wasn’t wrong, he could see that Rafael was impressed under his carefully neutral mask of disinterest. 

There were the looks too. They were subtle, so subtle he barely noticed at first. For all Rafael liked to act like he couldn't be bothered to deal with Sonny, he sure seemed to look at him a lot. And yeah, at first they were mostly looks of irritation, but those too lost their edge over time. Irritation seemed to give way to curiosity and then to something else entirely. Sonny would be sitting at his desk, hunched over his computer or idly twirling a pen between his fingers while lost in thought, when he would suddenly feel the weight of someone’s gaze on him. Rafael wouldn’t look away immediately either, like he wasn’t willing to be embarrassed at having been caught. So they’d lock eyes for a few seconds before one of them – usually Sonny – finally broke eye contact. 

Those months after Sonny shadowed Rafael on the Hodda trial felt like the precipice of something, like they were both holding their breaths and waiting for the other to release first. 

Then Dodds died and Rafael came clean about the threats and everything went to hell. Sonny was so, so mad when he found out that Rafael had been getting threats since the Terrence Reynolds case. It’s not like he was unaware that there are a lot of shitty cops out there, but he’d been around good ones for so long it was easy to forget. Between the threats and the general rallying of law enforcement behind Munson, it was a stark reminder. It had been such a relief when they brought in Felipe Heredio, right up until they realized he wasn’t going to roll on whoever paid him to make the threats. Munson and Heredio were both behind bars where they belonged, but Dodds was still dead and Rafael’s life was still in danger, so it hadn't felt like a win at all. 

Rafael’s mood grew more and more caustic as he lost all semblance of normalcy under the security detail. The squad tried their best to put in as much time as possible, but SVU was stretched thin as it was and Rafael ended up having to spend a lot of time with officers he didn’t know. Olivia vouched for them, but Rafael’s patience grew thinner and thinner with each passing day. It took three weeks before it snapped and he refused to cooperate with the detail anymore. As far as he was concerned, the immediate threat to his life was over with Heredio in prison. 

“You’re probably never going to figure out who hired him,” Rafael had said to Sonny when he’d tried to make him see reason. “The threats have stopped and until they start back up again, I’m resuming my normal life. Get out of my office.”

Sonny did, but the worry remained. As much as he hated to admit it, Rafael was probably right. It was unlikely they would ever find out who did it without the threats starting again. They would either have to live in uncertainty from here on out or wait until the conspirators hired someone else. It was a paralyzing thought, one that kept him up at night along with the look on Olivia’s face in the hospital that told them all they needed to know about Dodds's fate.

It had taken another two weeks for Sonny to crack under the pressure of it all, hanging on by the skin of his teeth until he couldn’t anymore. One thing led to another and he found himself as drunk as he had been in a long time, pounding on Rafael’s front door at nearly midnight. 

“Have you lost your mind?” Rafael had asked when he opened the door, bleary eyed and wearing pajamas.

Sonny had leaned against the frame, both to look calmer than he felt and to keep himself from swaying. “I have to talk to you about something important.”

“A case?”

“No, not a case.”

“Then it can wait until tomorrow.”

“It can’t,” Sonny had said. He knew if he didn’t do it then, he probably never would. “Listen, Rafael. I–”

“Don’t.” The word was sharp and final, Rafael holding up a hand to silence him. “You’re drunk.”

“But–”

“Carisi, I’m serious.” He had looked it too. Gone was the appraising, weighted looks Sonny had grown so used to. Rafael looked irritated in a way he hadn’t in years, like Sonny’s presence was an inconvenience he couldn't be bothered to deal with. “You’re going to regret saying it and I don’t want to hear it.”

It took a few seconds before his alcohol soaked brain put two and two together and he realized Rafael knew exactly what he was trying to say. 

_ I don’t want to hear it. _

“Right,” Sonny had said, feeling his face flush with embarrassment. He backed a few steps away from the door on wobbly legs. “I should go.”

Rafael made no protests, so Sonny left and that was that. 

Any and all progress they had made toward something resembling a relationship was gone, but they didn’t revert back to how things had been when they first met either. Sonny had tried to pretend like it never happened, to tease and push like he always had, but Rafael gave him nothing. No irritated looks, no sharp remarks. Sonny might as well have ceased to exist in Rafael’s mind as far as he could tell. 

By the time Rafael left, Sonny had long since gotten the message. Whatever he thought was between the two of them had existed strictly in his own head. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the drink the bartender was making is called a ramos gin fizz and it looks just as gross as it sounds
> 
> the next part should be up within the next week or two, but feel free to come hang out and be bitter with me on tumblr in the meantime. my username is <strike>ghoulbuddies</strike> evanbuckleyed and i'm always down to clown


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay SO i decided to split the last part into two chapters because it was getting way longer than i had anticipated and i didn't want to make you guys wait any longer than you already have, so here we are. thank you for waiting patiently, as well as for all the kudos and kind comments. i haven't written this much in this short of a time period since i was like 13 writing vampire diaries fanfiction (yikes lmao), so i'm crazy appreciative. 
> 
> this chapter deals more in depth with a svu case involving sexual assault than the last, so keep that in mind as you read. if you want more detail, feel free to send me a message either on here or at ghoulbuddies on tumblr.
> 
> finally, my knowledge of the legal field begins and ends with what google tells me, so if you're a lawyer and you're horrified by all my legal inaccuracies. my bad dude.

Sonny is about two minutes from walking out the door when his phone rings, and he knows as soon as he sees it’s Olivia he won’t be making it to Staten Island for Sunday dinner tonight.

“Carisi, I need you to come down here.” She sounds out of sorts – a combination of worried and angry that immediately sets him on edge. It never gets easier seeing the things they see everyday, but Olivia has been doing this long enough that she’s able to compartmentalize her own feelings enough to ensure the victim gets the best help she can provide. Hearing her sound anything less than put together is enough to make him brace himself. Sure enough, she adds, “We’ve got a case and it’s… a complicated one.”

“How so?” His mind is already running through dozens of scenarios, each one more horrific than the last, as he makes his way into his bedroom to change out of his casual clothes and into a suit. High profile vic or a high profile perp. Kidnapping. A human trafficking ring. A child human trafficking ring. People chained in someone’s basement for years. He’s worked in law enforcement long enough that his imagination has no shortage of material. 

“The victim was raped by her boyfriend. She consented to a rape kit, but she’s not sure she wants to press charges.” 

“Okay,” he says, frowning. Not great, but they’ve dealt with a hell of a lot worse. He puts his phone on speaker and sets it on his dresser, raising his voice so she can still hear him as he starts changing. “What aren’t you telling me?”

“Her boyfriend is a Manhattan homicide detective.” 

Sonny groans. “Oh, fantastic.”

Olivia meets him at the entrance of the precinct, which makes his already frayed nerves threaten to snap. She smiles when she sees him, but it’s grim and she looks tired. “How was your weekend, counselor?”

He doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to her calling him that. The first couple of times he’d had to resist the urge to preen like a peacock in the middle of the precinct, but now it’s almost enough to make him break out into a cold sweat. No doubt this would still be a shitshow as a detective, but as an ADA it’s at a whole other level. If this goes south, the firing squad is going to be aimed firmly at him. “It was great until now. Tell me about the victim.”

“Her name is Alison Fitzgerald.” There’s only a handful of people in the precinct lobby, but Olivia keeps her voice low as they walk toward the elevators. The last thing they need is waking up to this all over the internet tomorrow. Forget going back to SVU, Sonny would be lucky if he could get a job in Nebraska. “She’s a twenty-nine year old second grade teacher from Brooklyn, but she moved to Manhattan about a year and a half ago for a new job.”

“Any red flags in her background?”

The elevator doors open just as they reach them. They wait until the last person steps out before they hurry on, Sonny hitting the “Close Door” button in rapid succession before anyone else can join them. When the doors finally close, Olivia leans back against the railing, letting out a sigh. “Not that we’ve found,” she says, pushing her glasses up onto her head so she can rub at her eyes. “She’s never gotten a parking ticket, let alone into any legal trouble. She volunteers at a couple of different charities on the weekend. We’ll dig deeper, but she seems credible.”

“That’s a relief.” He used to hate when Rafael made comments like that, like the credibility of the witness is more important than the truth, but Sonny gets it now. He hates it, but he gets it. They’re going to be facing an uphill battle worthy of Sisyphus here and it makes it just a little easier that the victim is seemingly average. Average means relatable and relatable means the jury is more likely to feel sympathy. “And the perp?”

“Dennis Fraley, thirty-five. He’s been a homicide detective for the last four years. They’ve been dating a little over a year and living together for the last six months. Unis have him in custody right now.”

Sonny’s head whips to the side so quickly his neck gives him a warning twinge. “He’s already been arrested? Olivia, _ what_–”

She opens her mouth but before she can reply the elevator comes to a stop and the doors open. Sonny is about to step off when he realizes they aren’t at SVU’s floor yet. A woman gets on and presses the button for the top floor. She and Olivia nod at each other while Sonny starts mentally packing for Nebraska. He’d filled Hadid in on the way to the precinct and she told him in no uncertain terms to tread very, very carefully. She left the “or it’ll be your job” out but Sonny got the message nonetheless. 

They arrive at their floor only a few seconds later, but Sonny has already gone through the five stages of grief. 

Olivia waits until they step out of the elevator and the doors close behind them before she turns to him, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Breathe, Carisi.” She gives him a shake. “It wasn’t our call. Alison called 911 before it happened and the unis that arrived at the scene arrested him.” 

“I’m going to need you to start from the beginning,” he says, rubbing his temple. He can feel stress a headache coming on and he suspects it’s not going away any time soon. 

Olivia leads him to the bullpen. Kat and Fin are nowhere in sight, but Amanda is at her desk with her face nearly pressed against the computer screen, eyebrows furrowed. She moves to stand when she notices them, but Olivia holds up her hand and she drops back down into her chair. 

“Long time no see,” Amanda says to him when they reach her. 

“Thought I’d get until at least tomorrow to recover,” he attempts to joke, but it fails to lighten the mood. Last night feels like a lifetime away right now. “So, someone tell me exactly what is going on. From the beginning.”

“Vic called 911 a little before noon,” Amanda says, nodding in the direction of Olivia’s office. Sonny can vaguely make out someone sitting on the couch. Alison, he assumes. “She told them her and her boyfriend had gotten into a fight and he hit her. She locked herself in the master bathroom to make the call, but apparently he had a key. According to her, he pulled her out of the bathroom by her hair and threw her face down onto the bed. Response time was something like five minutes, but he raped her before unis got there.”

“You think she’s credible?” Olivia had already said so, but Olivia’s automatic response is to believe the victim. He trusts her judgment, but he needs the devil’s advocate here, which is most definitely Amanda. 

Amanda nods. “Rape kit shows signs of vaginal trauma and bruises on her wrists.”

“Which is consistent with her story,” Olivia adds. “She said he held her wrists above her head to prevent her from fighting back. Not to mention she has a split lip from where he hit her beforehand.”

“You said the response time was five minutes? That’s a small window of opportunity.”

Olivia shoots him a look he hasn’t seen since his early days at SVU, a mixture of irritation and incredulousness. There’s also a heavy dose of disappointment in there as well, which sits heavily in his stomach even though he knows he has to ask these questions. “We all know that’s more than enough time, Carisi,” she says pointedly. 

“Listen, Liv,” Sonny says, holding up a conciliatory hand. “I’m just trying to think like the defense here. She’s accusing the homicide detective she’s been dating for the last year of assault and rape. Just because we believe her doesn’t mean a jury is going to. I have to look at this from every angle.”

“Which is why,” Olivia says, drawing out the words, “I have Fin and Kat at the emergency dispatch center now, trying to get a copy of the 911 call.”

“Alison dropped the phone when he came in,” Amanda explains to him, “but she’s not sure if the call disconnected.”

“So we might have gotten the attack on call.” He feels the first glimpse of hope since Olivia called him. Even if the call disconnected before the sexual assault, just having audio of Alison making the call in the first place will make their case a hell of a lot stronger. “Tell me more about Dennis Fraley.”

“He’s been with homicide for four years, like I said before,” Olivia replies. “We haven’t started talking to his coworkers yet, but he’s got a decent arrest record and no disciplinary action on file.” 

“Actually, about that,” Amanda says, gesturing to her computer. Olivia and Sonny both come around to stand behind her, leaning in to look at the screen where a few files are opened. “No disciplinary action was ever taken, but three people have filed complaints about him since he started with homicide. Use of excessive force. All three were by perps, so it was never taken seriously, but it could help to establish a penchant for violence.”

“Could be something. I’ll–” she cuts off as her phone chimes with a new alert. She pulls it out of her pocket, adjusting her glasses, and makes a pleased sound as she reads. “Fin and Kat got a copy of the call. They’re on the way back now.”

“He say what’s on it?” Sonny asks.

“No, just that they have it.” Olivia slides her phone back into her pocket and looks up at him. “I think it’s time you meet Alison.”

Olivia knocks before opening the door to her office, but Alison still startles slightly when they come in. She’s curled up on the corner of the couch, a mug in one hand and her phone in the other. Her hair is pulled back and her skin is pale, so the bruises forming on her chin and the side of her mouth are immediately noticeable. The split in her lip looks like it has at least two stitches, maybe three. 

“Alison, this is ADA Carisi,” Olivia murmurs, gesturing to him. “He’s here to talk to you about your case.”

“Call me Sonny, please,” he says in the same hushed tone, holding out a hand. 

Alison sits her phone down on the cushion beside her and leans forward to shake it. The sleeve of her sweater pulls up with the motion and he can see the dark bruise around her wrist before she pulls her hand back, yanking the sleeve down. She clears her throat, looking away. “I’m not sure I want to press charges.”

“That’s alright.” Olivia joins her on the couch, putting a hand on her arm. Alison doesn’t look at her, but she leans into the touch. “We don’t have to make any decisions right now. Right, Sonny?”

“That’s right.” He turns one of the chairs in front of Olivia’s desk around and sits so he doesn’t loom over them. “I’m just trying to get an idea of what happened.”

“Dennis and I had been fighting on and off all morning,” Alison says, tucking a stray piece of hair behind her ear. “For weeks, really, but it got bad this morning.”

“What were you two fighting about?”

“His drinking.” She adjusts herself so she’s sitting up straight, wincing at the movement, and quickly takes a sip from her mug to hide the reaction. Sonny keeps his face perfectly blank, nodding at her to continue when she glances at him. “He’s always been a drinker, but it’s gotten worse the last couple of months. I think work has been stressful lately, but he gets angry when I ask him about it.”

“That doesn’t give him the right to take it out on you,” Olivia says and Sonny hums in agreement. “I’ve been a detective for a long time and Sonny here was one for years before he became an ADA, so we know exactly how stressful this line of work can be. But no matter how much stress we’re under, it’s never alright to take it out on someone we love.”

Alison’s eyes well up and she makes a frustrated noise, wiping at the tears before they can fall. “I just can’t believe he did this.”

“Has he ever been physical with you before?” Sonny asks. “Not just hitting, but any form of aggressive behavior or violence? Pushing or kicking? Throwing things at you?”

“He’s never hit me before today but he has gotten rough.” She hesitates for a few seconds, pulling the thin silver necklace out from underneath her sweater and shifting it from side to side, looking embarrassed. “Sometimes he’ll grab onto my wrist when I try to walk away or push me, but I always told myself it wasn’t a big deal. He wasn’t abusing me, he just lost his temper sometimes.”

She sniffles, so Sonny grabs the box of tissues from Olivia’s desk and holds it out to her. “Can you tell me about what happened this morning? You said you two were fighting.”

“It was barely eleven o’clock and he had already had two beers.” She sets her mug down on the table and grabs a handful of tissues, patting at her eyes a few times before wiping her nose. “I had enough, you know? So we got into it again, but I didn’t back down this time. I told him he was becoming an alcoholic, but he said I had no idea what I was talking about. He said I had a lot of nerve judging him when all I do everyday is teach little kids the alphabet. He’s made little digs about my career the entire time we’ve been together, but the way he said it this morning was so – malicious. I told him if he didn’t stop drinking and get some help I would leave him.”

“And that made him angry?”

She chokes out a laugh and looks down at the tissues in her hand. “Yeah, you could say that. He got in my face, screaming about how I would never be able to find a man like him again. I pushed him away from me. Not hard,” she adds quickly, eyes flitting back and forth between him and Olivia. “I don’t think he even took a step back, but I did push him. The look in his eyes afterwards, it was–” she breaks off, shaking her head like she’s trying to clear it of the memory. “That’s when he hit me.”

“Is that when you locked yourself into the bathroom?”

She nods. “I think he was surprised after he – after he hit me, so it gave me a few seconds head start. I ran to the bathroom in our bedroom and locked the door to call 911. Which was so stupid, I should have just left–” she cuts off with a sob and Olivia wraps an around her shoulder, telling her to take a deep breath. It takes a moment, but finally she calms down enough to continue. “Dennis lived there for years before I moved in with him, so I didn’t realize he had a key. I dropped the phone when he came in, but I’d already given them the address.”

“I know this is hard,” Olivia says softly, “but can you tell us what happened after that?”

“He grabbed a handful of my hair and dragged me out of the bathroom,” she answers, absentmindedly reaching a hand up to touch the dark strands. “It all happened so fast. Before I knew it, he had me pinned down on my stomach on the bed. I tried to fight him off but he held my wrists above my head and pushed my face down into the pillow. Then he – he pulled down my underwear and raped me. It must have only been a few minutes later when the police started banging on the door and he got off me.”

Sonny leans forward, trying to catch her eyes from where she’s been staring blankly somewhere over Olivia’s desk. “Alison, I’m so sorry that happened to you,” he says firmly when she finally looks at him. “I know you said you aren’t sure if you want to press charges, but no one has the right to do that to another person. It doesn’t matter that he’s a cop or that he’s your boyfriend.”

She scoffs, some of the light coming back into her eyes. She looks angry for the first time since he’s walked in the room even as tears once again begin to well up. “Of course it matters that he’s a cop.” She grabs her phone, brandishing it at him. “My own _ parents _ can hardly believe it. You really think a bunch of strangers will?”

“They will.” Olivia says it with so much conviction it’s hard not to believe her even though he knows better. “Two of my detectives are on the way here now with a copy of the 911 call you made. That combined with the rape kit and the injuries on your face means we have a strong case here.”

Alison turns to him, looking dubious. 

“I’m not going to lie to you and tell you this is going to be easy.” Sonny didn’t always agree with Rafael’s tactics as a lawyer, but one thing they always saw eye to eye on is to prepare for the worst instead of hoping for the best. _ Only bad lawyers use hope as a strategy _, Rafael had said to him once and it’s a sentiment that has stuck with him since. The backlash is going to be immediate and immense, but he thinks they’ll have a fighting chance with what they have at least. “But we have a lot of strong evidence in your favor. That makes all the difference.”

She glances down at her hands in her lap. They’re shaking and the skin of her knuckles are turning white from how hard she’s gripping her phone, but her voice is steady when she speaks. “I’ll press charges, but I don’t want to testify.” She raises her chin in defiance, like she’s waiting for the objections. “I’m not going to sit in a courtroom and let a defense attorney tear me to pieces in front of everyone.”

“Why don’t we cross that bridge when we come to it?” Olivia replies, giving her a strained smile. 

Tuesday morning, Sonny finds himself strolling into the precinct’s interrogation room in his best suit with a folder in one hand, a cup of coffee in the other and an air of carefully constructed bravado surrounding him. 

“You’re thirty minutes late.” Allen Atwood isn’t much to look at, a man of small stature in his sixties with solid white hair and horn rimmed glasses, but Sonny isn’t fooled. He might look like someone’s grandfather, but Hadid did her homework on him as soon as Dennis Fraley retained him. He’s got an impressive success rate, even if he does tend to settle. “You’d think a man in your position would be on time.”

“My position?” Sonny asks, feigning surprise. He places the folder and the cup off to the side of the table and smooths his tie down as he sits. “I’d be more concerned with your client’s position, considering he’s looking at twenty years in prison. At least.”

Dennis Fraley looks unconcerned. He’s relatively tall and well built, but he looks older than his thirty-five years with thinning blonde hair and crow’s feet at his eyes. He seems perfectly relaxed leaning back in his chair, exuding the confidence of a man who believes he’s going to get away with what he did. 

His bail hearing had been first thing yesterday morning. Atwood had argued for release on his own recognizance and Sonny had argued for remand, but instead the judge set bail at $100,000 and issued a restraining order. Fraley posted bail barely two hours later, but it was no surprise to anyone the money was raised so quickly. The courtroom yesterday had been filled to the brim with cops, all outraged that one of their own was being persecuted. On top of that, the press had gotten wind of Fraley’s arrest, so there was a crowd of protesters standing outside of the courthouse waving signs and spitting vitriol. It was the Munson case all over again, only this time it’s Sonny in the hot seat. Hadid at least had gotten on board as soon as they presented all the evidence to her Sunday night, regardless of the majority of public opinion being on Fraley’s side. 

Sonny is more than glad to tear down that false sense of security. 

“Mr. Carisi, let’s be perfectly honest with each other,” Atwood says, a hint of condescension in his voice. “My client is a respected member of the community, who’s dedicated his entire life to fighting for justice. These charges are nothing more than Ms. Fitzgerald’s revenge for being broken up with.”

“Ah, right. That’s your story.” Sonny laughs, leaning back in his chair. He’s taking one right out of Rafael’s playbook, making them wait and then making them feel like they’re already lost even if they don’t know it yet. “You broke up with her and she came at you so you had to defend yourself. Calling the police and the rape allegation is all just part of her plan.”

“That’s what happened.”

Sonny pulls the folder in front of him and flips it open, looking over the top sheet. “Even though she had vaginal trauma, bruises and your semen all over her, according to the rape kit?”

Fraley opens his mouth to speak, but Atwood beats him to it. “As Detective Fraley told the SVU detectives, he and Ms. Fitzgerald engaged in intercourse that morning. It was admittedly rough, but completely consensual.” 

“So you, what?” Sonny asks, raising an eyebrow. “Decided to have one last round before breaking up with her?”

“Listen, I’m not proud of it.” Fraley sighs, averting his gaze and dropping his shoulders. It would be a good show at shame, if it didn’t look like he had Googled how to play the part before he walked in here. “I knew I was going to break up with her, but one thing led to another and, well. I do love her, you know?”

“You love her?” Sonny pulls a couple of photos from the folder and slides the first one across the table. It’s the one the hospital took of Alison’s face when she first arrived, before they stitched her up. She hadn’t started bruising yet, but the skin of her chin and mouth are red and swollen. In the upper corner of the photo, you can just make out one of her blood shot eyes. Sonny slides the next photo, the one from yesterday. The swelling is down, but the bruises are a deep purple against her fair skin. The final photo is of her wrists, the parallel lines of dark color resembling the shape of fingers. “Is that what you do to the people you love, Mr. Fraley?”

Fraley looks up from the photos, but that hangdog expression is gone. Sonny gets a glimpse of what’s underneath that mask and it isn’t a good man dedicated to fighting for justice. It’s cold and dark and malicious, no different than every other predator who’s sat in this room. “It’s Detective Fraley,” he corrects stiffly. “And I already went over this. She came at me when I broke up with her, so I defended myself.”

“You defended yourself,” Sonny repeats. “She’s – what? A little over five-two and a hundred and twenty pounds soaking wet? So you’re telling me that a man of your size and training couldn’t have subdued her in any other way besides punching her in the face, Mr. Fraley?”

His jaw twitches. “It was instinctive.”

“I’m sure you can understand that, Mr. Carisi,” Atwood jumps in, shooting Fraley a look. “You were a detective until only recently, isn’t that correct?”

“That’s correct,” Sonny answers, but his eyes are still on Fraley. He’s known a lot of cops like him, ones that only do the job because of the power it gives them. Nothing more than bullies who like how it feels to have a gun in their hands and a badge to back up their bad behavior. Sonny worked with a few of them back in Staten Island as a homicide detective. The only good thing that came out of that time in his life other than learning what kind of cop he never wanted to be was how to push their buttons. “But Mr. Atwood, I do hope you aren’t implying that the stress of the job gives someone the right to assault and rape their partner.”

Fraley slams his hand down on the table, face reddening. “You have a lot of nerve, you know that?” he spits out. “I’m one of you.”

“No, Mr. Fraley, you aren’t.” The angrier he gets, the calmer Sonny feels. Backlash or not, this guy is going to prison. Sonny can feel it. “You’re a rapist.”

“I am not–” he starts, but Atwood places a hand on his arm and shushes him. Fraley shrugs him off, looking at Sonny like he wants nothing more than to come across the table, but he shuts up.

“You know, when you pulled Alison out of that bathroom by her hair you overlooked one small detail,” Sonny says conversationally. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out his phone, opening up the file he needs and placing it on the table. “She never hung up the phone.” 

He presses play.

_ “911, what’s your emergency?” _

_ “It’s my boyfriend_, _ ” _ Alison’s trembling voice says through the speaker. “_He just hit me. _”

_ “Ma’am, what is your name and address?” _

In the background, as Alison frantically talks to the dispatcher, Fraley’s voice can be heard screaming obscenities and pounding at the bathroom door. It pauses for a handful of seconds, Alison’s labored breathing the only sound coming through, before the door slams open and she starts screaming. Both of their voices grow muffled as he drags her into the bedroom and throws her down onto the bed, but she distinctively says, _ “no, get off me” _ before he pushes her face into the mattress. The remainder of the call is interspersed with the dispatcher asking if Alison is still there and the occasional muffled noise. 

Fraley’s face gets progressively paler the longer the recording plays and for the first time Sonny sees something like fear on his face. _ Got you_, he thinks. He stops the recording once the police arrive and slides the phone back into his pocket. “That doesn’t prove anything,” Fraley says, but his voice is weak.

“Mr. Fraley, do you honestly believe a jury is going to look at Alison’s injuries and listen to that recording and not believe what they were hearing was you raping her?”

Before he can reply, Atwood says, “Sexual abuse in the third degree. No jail time. He does probation and mandatory counseling.”

“A misdemeanor?” Sonny barks out a laugh, unable to help himself. He gathers the photos into a neat pile, putting them back into the folder, and begins to rise from his seat. “I’ll see you at trial.”

“Wait.” Atwood huffs out a sigh, adjusting his glasses. “What are you offering?”

“Rape three and assault three,” Sonny says, settling back down into the chair. Fraley immediately starts to protest, but Atwood silences him and gestures for Sonny to go on. “He does five years in prison, ten years probation and registers on the list.”

“There is no way in _ hell_–”

“Detective Fraley, please–” 

“–I’m going to prison because of that bitch,” Fraley finishes, face rapidly flushing. He stands in one swift motion and the chair makes an awful screeching noise as it skids backwards across the floor. He leans across the table, jabbing a finger at Sonny’s face. “You’re going to regret this.”

Ignoring Atwood’s objections, he strides across the room and yanks the door open with enough force that it slams into the wall. 

Once Fraley disappears from view, Sonny turns back to Atwood, who’s rubbing at his temple like he has a headache. “Let’s be perfectly honest with each other, Mr. Atwood,” he parrots. “If I get your client on that stand, the jury will convict him. They’ll see beyond the badge to the man he really is and he’ll go to prison for decades. You have until six tonight to accept the deal or we’ll be going to trial.”

“I’ll let you know, Mr. Carisi.”

Sonny waits until Atwood has left before he grabs the folder and the now cold cup of coffee and makes his way out of the room. The whole squad is right outside the door in front of the two way mirror, where they’ve been watching since the beginning. 

“Five years?” Kat asks, arms crossed. “Seriously? With what we have on that guy? You’ve gotta be joking.”

“Kat, please,” Olivia says, but she doesn’t look happy either.

“What we’ve _ got_,” Sonny says, tossing the cup into the trash, “is a respected homicide detective being accused of rape by his girlfriend who refuses to testify. Maybe we could get him on the assault without her help, but the rape? It’s hard enough getting a conviction when the victim testifies. It’s not going to happen without her testimony, not with this case.”

“We can keep trying to convince her,” Amanda offers, but she doesn’t look hopeful. Every time they’ve tried to talk to Alison about testifying, she digs her feet in more. Regardless of rape shield law, her identity is out there and people aren’t exactly lining up to offer her their support. He can’t blame her for not wanting to testify, even if it does make their jobs a whole lot harder.

Kat ignores her, eyes still locked on him. He suspects any progress they may have made is officially lost. “You don’t even believe her, do you?”

“Of course I believe her.” His voice rises to almost a shout as the stress from the last couple of days catch up to him and his hair thin patience finally snaps. They all startle at his volume and a few unis on the floor turn their heads to look at him, eyes cautious like they aren’t sure if they’re going to have to intervene. He takes a deep breath, running a hand over his face. When he speaks again, his voice is much quieter. “I believe her, but I’m worried a jury is going to buy into his claim that it was consensual and acquit him because they won’t believe a cop would do something like that to his girlfriend. Especially when they don’t get to hear Alison’s side of the story from her directly.”

“I’m with Carisi on this one,” Fin says and Sonny shoots him a grateful look. “Doesn’t matter how good the evidence is, juries are unpredictable.”

“But the 911 call–”

“We know she’s being raped on that call, but Atwood could say they left the room entirely,” Amanda says. “Even with TARU enhancing the audio, we can’t hear much.”

“This is unbelievable,” Kat says, throwing up her hands in frustration and storming away.

After a brief pause, Fin says, “She’s not gonna last here” and shrugs when Olivia shoots him a look.

“Not helpful, Fin,” Olivia says before turning her attention to Sonny. “Hadid doesn’t want this to go to trial, does she?” 

“No, she doesn’t.” Sonny stands up straighter, squaring his shoulders. As much as it feels like the contrary, he isn’t a detective and Olivia isn’t his boss anymore. He can’t worry about how she’s going to take every one of his decisions. Rafael didn’t, regardless of their friendship. “But neither do I. If Alison was willing to testify we would have a much better chance at getting a conviction, but since she isn’t this is the best deal we’re going to get. I’ve already explained this to her and she was okay with it. Liv, she wants this to go away.”

Olivia pinches the bridge of her nose for a moment before exhaling and running a hand through her hair. “Amanda, Fin, talk to Alison and make sure she still hasn’t changed her mine. Carisi, let me know the second you hear from Fraley’s attorney.”

With that, she disappears into her office. 

Alison has not changed her mind about testifying, but in the end it doesn’t matter because Atwood calls Sonny at half past five to inform him Mr. Fraley will be taking the deal.

The next time he sees Rafael is on Thanksgiving. 

It’s a tradition that started before Sonny came to SVU and has continued ever since despite partner changes, moves, retirements and break ups. Olivia invites the squad over every Thanksgiving night for their own celebration. For her, it’s the only celebration she has so she goes all out with the traditional Thanksgiving food and decorations. More often than not, Amanda doesn’t go home for the holidays and her family doesn’t come to her, so she spends the majority of the day at Olivia’s place helping her prepare and letting the kids play together. For Fin and Sonny, they head over whenever they’re done with their own family celebration earlier in the day. 

Sonny arrives at half past six with a pan of Italian stuffing in one hand and his mother’s homemade tiramisu in the other. Between how much he’s talked about them over the years and them helping out both Tommy and Mia, his mother in particular has grown fond of the squad. Not fond enough to come to Manhattan to meet them, but fond enough to cook for them anyway. 

“Sorry I’m late,” Sonny tells Olivia when she opens the door. For once the drive back from Staten Island to Manhattan hadn’t been terrible, but he’d stayed at his parents’ place longer than he usually does catching up with everyone. He sees his immediate family almost every Sunday, but he’s got a whole horde of cousins and aunts and uncles who he never lays eyes on outside of holidays anymore. It had taken him nearly thirty minutes to get out of the door this afternoon, escaping one round of goodbyes only to be pulled in by another, and he’d had to rush to get back home and cook the stuffing before it was time to leave again. 

She waves him off, taking the pan of stuffing so she can pull him into a one armed hug without the risk of dropping something. “Happy Thanksgiving, Sonny,” she says warmly, squeezing him. 

“Happy Thanksgiving, Liv.”

Finn is evidently running late as well, but everyone else is scattered around. Noah and Jesse are sitting on the floor in front of the coffee table with crayons and markers scattered around the surface, coloring print outs of turkeys. Kat and Rafael are sitting on the couch, a glass of wine in each of their hands. Kat looks less than pleased to see him, the chill they’d managed to thaw before the Fraley case back with a vengeance, but Rafael gives him a half smile and a nod.

Sonny finds himself returning the smile, even if it is a little unsure and a little awkward. He’s in too good of a mood to conjure up any of that anger and resentment he’d had the last time they saw each other. In truth, he feels less angry and resentful toward him in general. There’s always going to be a small part of himself that’s bitter about how everything happened, but he feels like he understands Rafael a little better now. Part of it is the book, obviously. It was an insight into his mind Sonny never would have gotten otherwise, but a lot of it has to do with the Fraley case. He’d lost count of how many times he’d asked himself _ what would Rafael do? _ during those handful of days. Fraley had gone down a hell of a lot easier than Munson had, but it still brought back all of those old memories. The backlash and Dodds, of course, but also the dark circles under Rafael’s eyes. The tense way he held himself. Sonny has never truly been able to grasp the immense pressure Rafael had been under during that time, not until he found himself in a similar situation. Sonny’s respect for him has grown tenfold over the last couple of weeks and it’s done wonders for helping him get over his anger. 

_ What would Rafael do? _ What’s right, always, even if it’s hard. Even if it costs you everything.

Rafael quirks an eyebrow at him and his smile turns just a little mocking, as if to say _ well, well, well. Isn’t this a change of pace? _

It’s so reminiscent of the way things used to be between them that Sonny feels a spark of hope even as he rolls his eyes. Maybe it doesn’t have to end with uncomfortable silences and a number that is no longer in service. Maybe they can get past the awkwardness of a rejected late night confession and work towards rebuilding some semblance of the dynamic they had before. One filled with a lot of exasperation and bickering and pushing each other’s buttons, but no maliciousness and no anger. 

He is an optimist, after all. 

Olivia leads him to the kitchen where Amanda is standing in front of the stove, stirring what appears to be gravy and snacking on mini meatballs. They play a brief game of Tetris as they try to find a spot in the oven for the stuffing to warm. He offers to help finish up dinner but Olivia declines, so he leans against the counter and catches up with Amanda instead. He tells her about how the new guy Gina is dating managed to look only somewhat shell shocked at the utter chaos that is the Carisi family and she tells him about how Billie is growing a new tooth that’s wreaking havoc on everyone’s sleep schedule. Hence, why she’s passed out in Olivia’s room. 

“Get anymore concerned citizens storming the precinct?” he asks dryly.

“Not since the last one,” she answers, rolling her eyes. She’d called him a couple of days ago and told him about the guy who’d come in posing as someone wanting to make a statement. In actuality, the only thing he wanted to do was give them a thorough tongue lashing for putting Fraley away. Apparently he only gotten a minute or so into his tirade before unis had escorted him out, but it was a memorable experience.

“What did he say again?” he asks, snagging one of the mini meatballs and popping it into his mouth. “That you guys fell victim to what?”

“To the propaganda generated by the left to undermine the public’s faith in police,” Olivia says with a snort as she stirs salt into the mashed potatoes. 

“Since when has that needed any help,” he says and they both hum in agreement. 

Fin arrives shortly later with a bottle of wine and an apple pie Sonny strongly suspects wasn’t his own doing, but he pours himself a glass nonetheless and listens to Fin talk about his day with his family. He’s in the middle of telling a story involving a new white rug, a stray toy truck and entire bowl of cranberry sauce that did not end well for anyone involved when Jesse comes into the kitchen and asks him to come color with her, so he lets her lead him into the living room by the hand. 

Kat and Rafael are still on the couch, so he folds himself down onto the floor next to Jesse with only mildly groaning. “Don’t say anything,” Sonny warns when he catches Rafael watching in amusement. 

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You didn’t have to.”

“Excuse me,” Kat says, standing abruptly. She holds up her empty wine glass. “Need a refill.”

Rafael waits until she’s out of earshot before he says, “There’s a story there.” 

Sonny shrugs, accepting the blank turkey Jesse slides over to him and picking up the closest crayon in reach. A half used orange one. “One for another time.”

Noah is still a little shy around him, not nearly as used to seeing him around as Jesse is, but he loosens up when Sonny asks him about his new dance class. He knows a whole lot less about dance than he did baseball so there’s no shortage of questions, but Noah happily answers all of them. After awhile Rafael gets roped into coloring too, but he politely refuses Jesse’s offer of a spot on the floor.

“I won’t be able to get back up,” he explains and Sonny bites back a laugh. 

“Okay,” she says, unbothered, and hands him a sheet. 

Sonny tries not to stare, but it’s a surreal experience. Rafael colors the turkey with a precision that is both surprising and not surprising at all, rolling up the sleeves of his black button down to his elbows like he’s diving into a particularly difficult case. His brows furrow with concentration, nodding thoughtfully along whenever Jesse tells him green would look nice in that spot or turkeys can be pink if you want them to be. He knows from past conversations that Rafael doesn’t spend much time around kids, but watching him with Jesse and Noah makes Sonny wonder if that’s a choice or just how his life turned out. He listens thoughtfully to their stories, seemingly content to let them steer the conversation in whatever direction they want to. He makes comments throughout that obviously go over their heads, but have Sonny huffing out laughter. Rafael doesn’t look up from his turkey, but he looks pleased with himself each time it happens. 

A little after seven Olivia announces dinner is ready, so they gather up everything from the table and move it out of the way. Jesse and Noah sit at the kitchen table, but everyone else gathers in the living room. Between the plates of food and glasses and six sets of limbs, it’s a tight fit. Sonny ends up sitting between Amanda and Olivia on the couch while Fin, Kat and Rafael sit in the remaining kitchen chairs across from them. The kids are within listening distance, so for once they don’t talk about work. Kat talks a little bit about herself and her family considering she’s still new and getting to know everyone, but for the most part they bounce from one random topic to another. 

Sonny is hit with a wave of nostalgia even as he’s right there with them, like his body knows how much he’s going to miss this moment once it’s over. Somewhere along the way they’ve become like a second family to him and he misses them, even if he knows he made the right choice in moving to the DA’s office. As much as he loved being a detective, he had no desire to rise up the ranks and no desire to have his life begin and end with the job. Granted, he has no life now, but it won’t be like that forever. He’ll put in his time and earn his stripes at the DA’s office and then he’ll go out and get that life his family keeps bugging him about. All the while still helping people, just a little bit differently than before. 

By the time they finish eating, it’s just past eight. Billie had woken up around 7:30 with a vengeance, only stopping her wailing when Amanda had gotten a teething ring from the freezer and given it to her. Even then she continued to fuss on and off, clinging onto Amanda with one hand and the ring with the other. Now she looks half asleep, blinks getting longer and fewer in between. 

“I think we’re going to have to head out, y’all,” Amanda says, rubbing circles on Billie’s back, and Jesse immediately begins to protest around her bite of apple pie. “I know, I know, but your sister isn’t going to make it much longer.”

Billie refuses to be held by anyone but Amanda, so he helps her gather her stuff and gets Jesse ready to leave while Olivia packs several disposable storage containers full of leftovers. He offers to walk them down, but Kat says she should be getting home too, so they all leave together. It’s a signal that the night is coming to an end. They start cleaning up, scraping the remains of food off their plates and setting them in the sink, covering up the dishes with aluminum foil and wiping down counters. Fin is the next to go and Olivia disappears shortly after that to help Noah get ready for bed, so by eight-thirty it’s just Rafael and Sonny left.

Olivia said not to worry about the dishes, but they start in on them as soon as she walks out of the room anyway. They have a brief argument about dish washing procedure that Sonny wins, but after that they fall into an easy enough rhythm. Sonny scrubs the gunk off the dishes and Rafael puts them in the dishwasher, which is hardly an equal distribution of labor, but Sonny’s faith in his abilities has been shaken. Though if by the way Rafael is leaning against the counter looking pleased with himself, Sonny may have been conned. 

It’s all terribly domestic and Sonny focuses very hard on the task at hand. 

“It’s another time,” Rafael says after a few moments of surprisingly comfortable silence. At the confused look Sonny shoots him, he adds, “The story about why Kat apparently does not want to be in the same room with you.”

“Ah.” He scrubs stuck on gravy off of one of the plates and hands it over to Rafael before starting in on a serving spoon. “We’ve butted heads since the beginning – you know me and first impressions – but what really burned that bridge was the Fraley case.”

“From what Liv told me, it was a tough case.”

Sonny nods. “Kat is – idealistic,” he explains, handing off the spoon and picking up a bowl. “It makes her determined, but it also sets her up for disappointment when things don’t play out the way they should. She doesn’t think I tried hard enough.”

Rafael hums. “What do you think?”

He hesitates for a handful of seconds before saying, “I think given what I had to work with, I made the right call. Fraley deserved twenty years but he might not have gotten anything had we gone to trial.”

“Not enough time is better than no time.”

“I had a similar thought, a few weeks back,” he says, frowning down at the rapidly diminishing pile of dishes. “There was this fourteen year old boy who was assaulted by his uncle and he didn’t want to testify, so we settled. It took me _ days _ before I could stop thinking about it. It was like–” he pauses to gather his thoughts, to give words to this feeling he’s been having for weeks. If anyone will understand, it’s Rafael. “As a detective, once you make that arrest, you’ve done your job. As an ADA, the line between success and failure seems so much blurrier. His uncle will be out within ten years. Can I consider that a success, when that kid is going to be dealing with what happened to him for the rest of his life?”

“Sonny.” When he glances over at him, Rafael looks more serious than Sonny can remember him being in a long time, back straight and eyes intense. “Listen to me. That kid is going to be dealing with that happened to him the rest of his life regardless of how much time his uncle got. Would it have felt like more of a success if he had gotten twenty years in prison? Maybe, but you would have had to subpoena that kid. Would it have felt like a success forcing a traumatized fourteen year old to talk about the worst thing that ever happened to him in a room full of strangers? Like you already said, you do the best you can with what you have to work with. That’s all you can do. You have to let everything else go or you end up–” Rafael cuts himself off, but Sonny understands what he meant regardless.

“You’re right,” he says, blowing out a breath and rubbing the back of his wrist against his forehead. A drop of water falls from his hand onto his cheek and he turns his head, rubbing at it with his shoulder. “I’m just feeling maudlin tonight. It’s probably the wine.”

Rafael snorts, breaking the somber mood that had descended over them. He leans back against the counter, crossing his arms over his chest. “Actually, I think it’s just you.”

“You know what–” He’s cut off by his phone ringing and he grabs a dish towel, drying off his hands just enough to pull it out. It’s not a number he recognizes, so he silences the ringer and slides it back into his pocket. 

Rafael raises an eyebrow.

“Telemarketer,” he explains, turning his attention back to the handful of dishes left in the sink. “You know how it goes. Put your number on one website and suddenly you’re getting five calls a day.”

Olivia walks in just a moment later, hair twisted up and glasses on. “I told you two not to worry about those dishes,” she admonishes, but she looks pleased at the now empty sink. “Noah wanted an extra bedtime story tonight, but I was going to get to them.”

Sonny wipes down the area around the sink with the dish towel before folding it and hanging it over the stove’s handle. “Liv, you cooked all day. The least we can do is the dishes.”

“Well, at least let me pack up some leftovers for you two,” she says, already reaching for the storage containers. “Carisi, tell your mother her tiramisu is incredible and I want the recipe.”

“To do what with?” Rafael asks dryly. “Stick in a drawer somewhere and never use?”

That starts a round of bickering Sonny firmly stays out of, even if he does get a laugh out of it. After they’ve finished packing up the rest of the food and throwing away the disposable pans, Olivia divides the remaining wine that Fin had brought into three glasses and hands one to each of them. She makes her way into the living room and Sonny starts to follow, only to stop when Rafael touches him on the back of the elbow to get his attention.

“Here.” Rafael hands him a piece of paper – one torn from the pad on Olivia’s fridge – and he unfolds it, immediately recognizing the handwriting. “My new number. For when you’re feeling maudlin.”

He doesn’t wait for a reply, leaving Sonny standing in the kitchen trying to fight the urge to smile.

_ not feeling maudlin_, Sonny texts Rafael that following Wednesday. _ but i am feeling nostalgic. what’s the name of that thai place carmen used to order for you? _

It’s innocuous and casual, but Sonny feels like a little kid again as he waits for a reply, all racing heart and jittery nerves. He’s getting flashbacks to being thirteen, standing in the kitchen with the phone pressed to his ear and sweating as he waited for Jessica Albright to answer the phone. It’s a horribly embarrassing experience even without his sisters standing in the living room making exaggerated kissing noises, both because it had taken nearly a week for him to work up the courage to send the text and because he’s a grown ass man who should be working instead of staring at his phone screen. 

It’s not like it’s the first time he’s ever texted Rafael, but it feels different this time around. It had always been strictly work related before. It was a necessity for everyone on the squad to have Rafael’s number and Rafael to have theirs considering how quickly and frequently something on a case could change. But this is something else. This is Rafael giving Sonny the ability to be in his life again and Sonny taking it. 

He gets a reply six agonizing minutes later and his phone almost goes flying out of his hand. It reads, _ Why don’t you asked her yourself? You two work in the same building _but he sends the name of the restaurant a few seconds later nonetheless.

They end up texting on and off all day, which squashes any fears Sonny may have had about Rafael only giving him his number out of some misguided attempt at politeness. He should have known better, considering politeness is hardly one of Rafael’s primary qualities. Rafael is still Rafael – argumentative and stubborn and sarcastic to a fault, but there’s also a lightness to him now that Sonny has never experienced before. He makes jokes and he sends the occasional emoji and it’s all so strange considering less than a month ago Sonny could barely be civil toward him, let alone actually have an enjoyable conversation. 

Turns out Sonny is only good at holding a grudge from a distance. 

By the time he leaves the office shortly after six, he’s done embarrassingly little more than stay glued to his phone all day. He did the bare minimum of what was required of him, but any attempt at getting ahead of schedule went out the window hours ago. They’re still texting even now – _ God, I forgot how much traffic there is in Manhattan. It’s ridiculous _ – as Sonny stops by that Thai place and picks up dinner on the way home. Even after talking the majority of the day, he still knows very little about what Rafael has been up to the last couple of years. He knows about the book, obviously, but other than that the only thing Rafael had mentioned was he’d only returned about two months ago. 

He’s about to ask exactly where it is he returned from when his mother calls.

“You sound chipper,” she comments after he answers.

“Good day at work.”

“Uh huh.” She sounds skeptical. Work rarely leaves him in this good of a mood, regardless of whether or not it was a good day. “Put away some bad guys?”

“No bad guys to put away.” Technically true but also low on the reasons of why it was a good day. Instead of elaborating, he adds, “What are you and Dad up to tonight?”

“Oh, you know, nothing special,” she says noncommittally and immediately follows with, “Listen, there’s someone from church I’d like you to meet” in a much more serious tone.

“Mom, come on,” he says, unable to keep the whine out of his voice. He knows where this is going and he’s got to shut it down immediately if he doesn’t want to spend the next thirty minutes being guilt tripped about not giving her grandchildren yet. As if she doesn’t already have multiple. “Please tell whatever nice young woman you spent all of Sunday chatting up about me that I am sure she is lovely, really, but I’ve got a lot going on with work right now and–”

“First of all, it’s a nice young _ man_.”

That pulls him up short. It’s not that she doesn’t know he’s bisexual, but every time she’s ever tried to set him up it’s always been with a woman. _ Wow, she must really be getting desperate for me to settle down_, he thinks and promptly feels guilty. That’s not fair. His parents had been surprised when he’d come out to them in his early twenties, but they’d never made him feel like they disapproved of his sexuality. They treated the first guy he brought home the same way they had treated the first girl, meaning they were overbearing and embarrassing but also undeniably kind and welcoming. The relationship hadn’t lasted more than a couple of months, but he’ll never forget the look of righteous fury on his mother’s face when she wacked his cousin upside the head with an oven mitt when he’d made some comment about Sonny’s _ proclivities_. 

“And second of all,” she adds loftily, pulling him back into the present, “He could be the love of your life, Dominick.”

“Ma, I really doubt a random guy from church is the love of my life.”

“Random guy? A random guy is one you bring home after meeting him in a bar two weeks beforehand.”

“That was _ one _ time–” 

Sonny spends the remainder of the ride home listening to his mother wax poetic about David, who is a doctor – _ “A doctor! How nice would that be? A lawyer and a doctor in the family.” _ – and a philanthropist and possibly the next Messiah considering how excited she is. He appreciates that she isn’t secretly praying he ends up marrying a woman every night, but she tends to jump the gun in situations like this. 

He continues to hum along to whatever she’s saying as he lets himself in the building, stopping by the front desk to pick up the Frozen Lego set for his niece that had been delivered earlier in the day, and tries to juggle everything up the stairs. He almost drops the Thai food as he unlocks his front door, but manages to catch it by the handles before it hits the floor. He sticks the food on the counter once he’s inside, but he grabs the scissors from the knife block and takes the package to the table. 

“Hey, Ma,” he interrupts as he glides the scissors through the packing tape. “I know Bella said Annie wants Frozen Legos for Christmas, but she specifically mentioned the castle, right? Because there’s like twenty different–”

A loud _ pop! _ sounds throughout the room when he opens the box and he jumps back with a startled shout, but he’s not fast enough. Something thick and wet sprays all over his face and neck, and the second it touches his skin he’s no longer standing in his apartment. He’s standing in that old farmhouse in Harding with the cold metal of a gun barrel pressed to his forehead, so paralyzed with fear it takes all he has to open his mouth and beg Cole not to kill him. It’s all so real – the smell of the woods, the sound of Quinn crying in the background, the tarp swaying back and forth in the breeze let in by the open window. 

He doesn’t know how long it takes, but he gradually comes back to himself. There’s no woodsy smell anymore, just the familiar scent of his apartment intermingled with Thai food and something coppery. There’s no breeze on his face and the only sounds he hears are the usual city noises filtering in from the street below and a muffled voice he can’t quite place until he looks down and spots his phone on the floor – it’s his mother shouting through the speaker, pitch getting higher and more frantic with each passing second.

He needs to – move. To pick up his phone and call someone, call _ everyone_, but all he can do is look around, sucking in a sharp breath when he catches sight of the box. There’s some kind of device within, attached to what looks like a popped balloon. The inside is saturated with blood, but he can just make out through the splatter a message written in black marker on one of the inner flaps. 

_ traitors die bloody _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> final part should be up within a few weeks! also happy thanksgiving if that's something you celebrate


End file.
